


Relearn, Restart

by emavee



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Canon character deaths, Five is a good brother, Gen, Good Sister Vanya Hargreeves, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, Leonard Peabody is a creepy piece of shit, Non-Consensual Drug Use, Number Five | The Boy Needs A Hug, Reginald Hargreeves' A+ Parenting, Temporary Character Death, The Apocalypse, Time Travel, Torture, Vanya Hargreeves Needs A Hug, Violence, he's just going through some stuff in the beginning, no incest here friends
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-12
Updated: 2019-05-05
Packaged: 2019-11-16 00:06:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 10
Words: 29,909
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18083567
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/emavee/pseuds/emavee
Summary: Number Seven tore the world down around her until there was nothing left.But that power wouldn’t dare hurt its vessel. No, no, no. For her, it was freedom. It was relief. It was safety.She was safe, even as the world ended around her.[Vanya survives the apocalypse and Five has a lot to deal with--and a different perspective]





	1. scatenato

**Author's Note:**

> Well, I was going to wait until I had more written to post this, but uh I got excited

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Vanya?” he whispers. She nods once, grinning, and Five is tearing towards her before he knows what’s happening.

An unyielding monster, forged in isolation and neglect, in a cruel, cruel childhood and an empty existence, repressed and pushed down farther, farther, farther until it hurt _so bad_ , always told she was worthless, nothing, _ordinary._ She stood no chance against the power roaring inside of her, demanding revenge for all its years of being locked away.

A cruel, cruel childhood. And it never seemed to end.

Number Seven brought the world to its knees, destroyed everything around her until there was nothing left.

Leonard—dead. She’d killed him hours before, when he too sought to control her.

One, Two, Three, Four—they tried to stop her, tried to _kill_ her, but their abilities were _nothing_ compared to the raw power that thrummed through her veins. They crumpled just as easily as everyone else.

_Who’s ordinary now?_

Number Seven tore the world down around her until there was nothing nothing nothing left.

But that power wouldn’t dare hurt its vessel. No, no, no. For her, it was freedom. It was relief. It was safety.

She was safe. She was safe. She was safe, even as the world ended around her.

 

And so, Vanya Hargreeves found herself alone in the apocalypse she’d created.

  
  


_“Vanya! Ben! Dad!_

_“Anyone?!”_

No, no, no this couldn’t be right. Five didn’t panic. He wasn’t built for that; he always knew what to do, that’s why he was the genius of the family. He always knew what to do…

His powers weren’t working. Over and over he tried, as if he could somehow manage to muscle his way back through time.

“Come on!” he yelled at himself. _No no no no no_

He turned slowly, everything going hazy as he stared at his home, burning.

He sank to his knees, watching the fires rage on, destroying everything he knew. It was all gone. What had he done? Why had he ever wanted to do this?

 

He didn’t know how long he knelt there, numb and nothing. It could have been minutes or it could have been days, he honestly wouldn’t have any idea.

But eventually, maybe even without conscious thought, he staggers to his feet. He has to move on. He can’t keep watching his home burn forever. He stumbles through the ruins, searching the burning horizon for any sign of life. He coughs as the smokey air filled his lungs. It stings at his eyes, making them water. That’s the only reason, just the smoke…

“Hel—” his cries are cut off by a round of harsh coughing that send him doubling over. Tears slip out from the corners of his squeezed-shut eyes, falling softly onto the ash-coated ground. “Hello?! _Please_ …”

“Number Five?”

At the sound of another voice, his head shoots up so fast that his vision spins. Stepping out of the wreckage that was once his home is a woman. She’s short and pale, with long dark hair, and her eyes—they’re changing as he watches her step closer and closer to him, morphing from icy blue back to familiar brown. In her hands is a strange-looking white violin. As the woman creeps closer to him, she sets it down gingerly on a slab of concrete, making sure that it’s clear of the fire before turning her attention back on Five. Unconsciously, Five takes a step back away from her. She’s not anyone he thinks he knows, yet there’s something so achingly familiar about her.

“Five?” she says again. Her voice is soft and confused and disbelieving, and suddenly she’s laughing, soft and hysteric, like she can’t believe what she’s seeing. “It’s you! Now I understand… This is where you went! Oh, Five…”

He stares at her, not understanding. Then she smiles at him, soft and gentle in a way that no one else really ever was towards him and he knows.

“Vanya?” he whispers. She nods once, grinning, and Five is tearing towards her before he knows what’s happening.

“Woah!” Vanya huffs and stumbles and Five realizes that he’s thrown his arms around her, clinging to his sister as if she might vanish suddenly.

“How are you here?” he asks, pulling back. Vanya has tears in her eyes as she looks down at him, somehow smiling in the end of the world. Five realizes that his own cheeks are wet. He wipes at them hastily.

Vanya just shakes her head and shrugs. “I can’t believe it’s you, Five. God, we all—I’ve missed you so much.”

“It’s… I… How long have I been gone?”

“Seventeen years,” she said, reaching out and squeezing his hand.

“And I… I never made it back?”

Her eyes go wide. “Oh, Five… I—”

“Right, okay. Yeah. I just… Yeah. I—I could still…”

“Of course you could,” she says, pulling him back into a hug. It’s more than he’s maybe ever been hugged in his entire life, but Vanya is suddenly his only anchor in this sea of fire and destruction, and he doesn’t have the option of feeling ashamed for needing comfort.

“What do we do now?” he murmurs against her shoulder.

Vanya shrugs, lost, and he pulls away with a sigh. “I guess… I guess we should try to make some sort of camp for now. Find some…” Five trails off as something catches his attention out of the corner of his eye.

It’s… it’s a body.

He stumbles towards it, and Vanya grabs his arm to hold him back, but he doesn’t stop, just staggers over the pieces of the broken world, dragging a confused Vanya behind him. “Five,” she protests, “what are you—Stop. You don’t… You don’t want to see—”

She tries to tug him away from the body, but it’s too late. Five can see his face, ashen grey from both dust and death. Soot-filled blond hair, a strangely familiar face. He ignores Vanya’s protests and continues to explore, a nauseating mixture of intrigue and horror churning in his stomach. Another body, this one dark-haired and marred by a damn-familiar scar. A woman, dark-skinned and curly-haired, her eyes still open, lips parted, frozen in death.

It’s the fourth form that drives home the realization he hadn’t wanted to have. Skinny, with curly hair and smudged makeup around his sightless eyes, body half-buried in the rubble, arm sticking out, the inside of his wrist exposed…

Klaus. It’s Klaus—dead. And… and Luther and Diego and Allison.

He drops to his knees beside Klaus, far enough away that he can’t reach out and touch his body, but close enough that he can study the drying blood in his hair and feel his brother’s empty gaze bore into him.

His family, all dead. No Ben, but he has to assume he’s buried somewhere along with them. All of them, except Vanya. Somehow, he still has her, and his chest aches with a terrible, guilty happiness that she’s still here with him.

“How—how did you make it out?” he asks. Five tears his eyes from Klaus and up to Vanya who stands a few feet away, her expression unreadable. It’s bad enough finding them like this, he can’t begin to imagine actually watching them die. “How did you survive, Vanya? You of all people?” She frowns and looks almost angry so he quickly amends his original statement. “I mean, the others… Well, you know what they can do. They have powers and you’re just—”

Suddenly he’s flying backwards, smacking hard into a pile of debris, feeling like he’s been hit by a truck. When his vision clears, he can see Vanya standing in the same spot, her head bowed and her fists shaking violently by her sides.

“Vanya?”

When she looks at him her eyes are blue. It sends shivers up his spine, the way she’s looking at him, like he’s a bug that she could squash in an instant if he so much as breathed in a way she doesn’t like. It’s so foreign, such an abrupt change, that he thinks he must have smacked his head when he was thrown.

The logic part of his brain moves faster than the rest of him, and he’s pretty sure he’s speaking before he manages a coherent thought.

“You have powers,” he whispers, and somehow that revelation manages to simultaneously seem ridiculously outlandish and make perfect sense.

Five has always been quick, and in an instant, everything slots into place in his memory: the sedatives she’s always taking, has been as long as he can remember; why she was born like them but somehow seemingly powerless; an old lingering feeling that Vanya should be training with them too, the origins of which he’d never been able to place; why their father worked so hard to keep her feeling low out of his own twisted fear of what would happen if she was too much for him to control.

Her eyes fade back to brown and she takes a step forward, one hand flying to her mouth, the other reaching towards him. She looks upset, guilty, but he can’t just let this go, not when his mind is moving at a million miles per hour, trying to piece everything together.

“Five, I’m so sorry—”

“You—” He looks at her, really looks this time. She’s covered in ash and her hair is windblown and tangled, but otherwise there isn’t a scratch on her. An icy dread floods his veins. “You did this?” he whispers.

It’s not really a question; all the signs are there, and the logical part of him, the biggest part of him, knows in that instant that somehow _Vanya_  was the one who destroyed the world. But it comes out like a question, because his heart is screaming and burning inside of his chest and he doesn’t want to believe it.

It doesn’t make sense, not at all. He _knows_ Vanya and she’s not _this._ He doesn’t recognize the person standing in front of him. This is not his sister, because his sister couldn’t do this.

It’s not just the powers, it’s the reality of it all. The Vanya he knows can get sad and frustrated and angry—god knows it’s easy to do in that house—but she was always gentle in the end, and understanding wherever she could be. She would always take the high road, even if it hurt her to do so.

She was gentle and kind and Five had _loved_ her, and in an instant he’s mourning her too, along with the bodies of his other siblings.

Vanya turns and looks around as if she’s seeing the wasteland for the first time. Her hands are shaking and the earth rumbles with them. Five doesn’t scare easily; he never imagined Vanya would be the thing he’s afraid of.

Vanya drops to her knees, and Five watches as her hands scramble at the dirt to eventually come to rest gripping Klaus’s exposed hand.

“I didn’t—” she sobs, “I didn’t mean to. I didn’t want this! I don’t want this! I’m sorry. I’m _sorry_ —I didn’t mean for this to happen. I don’t—I don’t want this. _I never wanted this!_ ”

She’s holding Klaus’s hand to her cheek, tears slipping between his bloodied fingers. Something snaps inside of Five.

He’s on his feet in an instant, marching over to Vanya. Anger boiling, he tears Klaus’s hand from Vanya’s grip and shoves her back, hard.

“Get away from him,” he snarls. Never before in his life has he spoken so cruelly towards Vanya, but he feels no sympathy for her. She doesn’t get to sit there and mourn the people that she killed.

He’s expecting to be thrown away by her powers again, but instead Vanya just stares up at him with red-rimmed _brown_ eyes. She stares at him, just crying and watching as Five turns his back on her and takes her place by Klaus’s side.

He grips Klaus’s cold, stiff hand in his own, and he hates the way it feels so much that he has to let go. With trembling fingers, he reaches out and closes his brother’s sightless eyes. He doesn’t look like he’s sleeping, he looks dead.

And Vanya killed him. She’d killed them all.

“Stay away from us,” he says, his voice shaking.

“ _Please_ , Five…”

“Go away!” His scream is so loud, ringing throughout the burning wasteland. In the echoes of it, he hears Vanya’s breath hitch, hears her stumble away, hears her fall against the ruined earth, hears her sob.

He doesn’t turn around.


	2. fermata

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He doesn’t allow himself the luxury of breaking down, not when there’s work to be done.

Five spends his first day in the apocalypse recovering his dead siblings from the rubble and it’s the most difficult thing he’s ever had to do. Not just the back-breaking labor of freeing them from where they’ve been buried, but closing their eyes and wiping the grime and blood from their still faces with his sleeve.

Vanya sits in the corner of his vision, watching. He doesn’t let her close enough to help.

She tried, levitating all the debris off of Luther’s body, but Five wouldn’t have it. He’d do it himself. He would be the one to free them from where Vanya buried them.

He doesn’t allow himself the luxury of breaking down, not when there’s work to be done.

He searches the wreckage for Ben’s body, nearly crying tears of frustration as more and more time goes on and he’s nowhere to be found.

“Are you looking for Ben?” Vanya calls softly from her perch on a fallen concrete slab.

Five closes his eyes and clenches his jaw so he won’t answer her. It’s so instinctive. Before, he would have answered any question Vanya asked him. He hadn’t always been the best at making time for her and he knew it, so he’d tried to make the most out of every interaction they had. They spent most of their time enjoying much-needed peace and quiet together, Vanya would play for him sometimes, it was a good background to whatever he was reading—

He reminds himself of what she’s done.

It doesn’t matter that he won’t talk to her. Five hasn’t changed at all since the last time she saw him, and she always had been able to read him better than the rest of the family. He doesn’t need to speak for her to know what he’s saying.

“You won’t find him,” she says.

Five’s fists shake by his side. He whirls on her, prepared to scream at her for burying Ben so deep in rubble that he won’t be found, ready to demand answers for how she could do this to them. She and Ben were close. Five, Six, Seven—a little trio of clashing personalities that somehow made the world bearable for each other. How could she throw that all away?

But when he looks at Vanya, all that anger dissolves. She’s looking down, a single tear falling softly onto her lap, and she sniffs once. And there’s an old sadness on her face, one that’s been weathered by time and he knows that there’s more to Ben’s disappearance than it seems.

But Ben not being around for her to kill wasn’t the same thing as sparing him. The option had just been taken from her.

Vanya wouldn’t have spared any of them.

 

It’s hours before he finally frees Luther—the last one—and drags him over next to the rest of his family. He’s tired, so incredibly exhausted, and all he wants to do is collapse on the ground, but he can’t. He knows he just dug them up, but he can’t leave them like this. They deserve a proper burial, or at least as good as Five can do for them.

It’s so hard to believe that the people in front of him are his family. They don’t look so different as adults and now that he’s seen the tattoos on their wrists, he has no doubt that it’s them. But they’re bloody and dirty and broken in ways that they never should have been, blood finally drying, crusting their faces and hands and chests. They’d led slightly dangerous lives as children—it was still the only life Five knew—but they’d never faced something they couldn’t handle before.

Not until Vanya.

He digs in the ruined ground, using his hands because it’s the only thing he has. His arms ache and dirt cakes his hands, filling the space beneath his fingernails and wedging itself into every crack of his dry skin. His siblings are much bigger than the ones he knows, especially Luther, and every muscle in his body is shaking from the strain by the time he manages to create a shallow grave for each of them.

The sun is beginning to set by the time he manages to get them decently covered up. It’s nothing close to a proper burial, just four mounds covered in a haphazard mix of dry dirt and rubble, but it’s the best he can do.

His stomach growls impatiently, but he ignores it. He doesn’t even know if he can survive for more than a few days out here, so he pushes the thought aside. He has more important things to do.

Five marks their graves crudely. He’s got limited options—no way to properly honor them with real headstones—so he arranges broken bricks in the shape of their numbers, making sure they can be seem amidst the rest of the destruction. He knows that the rest of his siblings had tried to reject the idea of being a number, but it’s the best he can do for them. Besides, he’ll know what it means, and he’s the only one around to mourn them.

“I’m sorry,” he murmurs, apologizing for it anyways. Has he ever apologized to any of them? Probably not, but it doesn’t seem right to be an asshole to them when they’re dead.

Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Vanya’s head shoot up at the sound of his voice and he instantly grimaces. He wants to say goodbye to his family privately, but Vanya won’t leave him alone.

He’s kneeling in front of their half-circle of graves, the flickering of the still-raging flames casting a desolate glow on everything. People tend to say things at funerals, right? But he doesn’t know what he’d say to them. They were alive that morning. They were dysfunctional and they grated on his nerves constantly, but they were still his family. He’d had them _that morning_ , and in an instant they were gone.

He’d spent the whole day looking at their dead bodies, but it’s really only just now sinking in, how lost and afraid and alone he is.

Five kneels in the miniature graveyard and it takes all of his effort not to cry anymore.

 

* * *

 

Vanya knows Five wants her to leave. He hasn’t spoken to her since he told her just that, but she can’t leave him.

She would give anything to undo what she’s done. The guilt is consuming her, washing away and downing out all the anger and vindication she’d felt before. Now that the power has faded away, she can’t understand how she did this, how she could have ever wanted this. She’d _killed_ _her family_.

She’d killed everyone.

And for just one moment, she’d thought she had Five back, after seventeen years of missing him so badly that it made her chest ache.

Until he realized that she was a monster. She doesn’t think he’ll ever be able to forgive her for this. She doesn’t blame him, but that doesn’t mean that it isn’t agony to watch the brother that she loved so much refuse to even acknowledge her.

She didn’t mean to do any of this, she just lost control. The power had been too much for her. Her father had repressed it down deep inside of her for almost thirty years, and she hadn’t been able to stop it when it latched onto all of her anger and desperation. Thirty years of abuse had exploded out of her violently, and in the moment, she hadn’t cared who would pay the price, even if it was the whole world.

 

Five buries their siblings and won’t let her help. The look on his face says everything—she doesn’t deserve to grieve.

That doesn’t stop her.

It doesn’t stop her from seeing their lifeless eyes and broken bodies every time she closes her eyes. It doesn’t stop the crippling pangs of regret and anguish that shoot through her every few moments. That’ll probably never go away. She couldn’t have stopped the apocalypse—there was simply too much power built up inside of her—but she will wish every day for the rest of her life that things had gone differently. That she’d never met Harold Jenkins, that she’d never let loose that first uncontrollable wave of power to kill him, opening the floodgates to _too much too much too much_ , that she’d tried harder with her family and they’d tried harder with her, that her father had never done this to her.

She did this, and maybe she doesn’t quite think she _deserves_ forgiveness, but her soul still craves it, and her heart is writhing in her chest, withering in pain every time Five turns his back on her.

She wants to be there for him, she wants to mourn with him, but he won’t let her anywhere near. And she gets it—she’s the reason they’re dead, and Five has no reason to understand why this happened.

Five doesn’t move for a long time, he’s just kneeling there amongst their crudely-buried bodies, watching. She can’t even begin to imagine what’s going on in his head—it’s hard enough to try and make any sort of sense of her own thoughts. There’s just raging emotions, but grief and regret are easier to contain than resentment and fear. She’s a bit surprised that it isn’t raining, but maybe her powers are exhausted; it had taken a lot of effort to lift the rubble off of Luther.

Her powers may be exhausted, but there’s no way she’s getting any sleep tonight. Not that she really wants to—the only thing worse than staring at her family’s graves is watching herself slaughter them over and over in her dreams.

Five too. His mind’s always moving at a hundred miles per hour, but even this must be too much for him to—

She watches, stunned and scared, as her now-little brother’s body careens forward to slump unmoving on the ground.

Ignoring the boundaries Five had established, Vanya rushes towards him, terrified that something’s wrong, but when she gets close enough, she can hear him breathing, heavy but steady. He’s asleep.

As gently as she can manage, terrified to wake him up and cause him to jump, Vanya rolls him onto his side. He must have scratched a cheek on something when he fell, because a thin drop of red trickles down to pool on the side of his nose. She wipes it away with her sleeve and it stains the white fabric. Five hisses in his sleep and scrunches up his nose in discomfort, but remains thankfully asleep.

Just one day in the end of the world and he’s already dirty and bleeding, palms raw, knees scraped, clothes torn. Normally so aloof and professional, this version of Five looks even younger than thirteen, and nothing like the mission-hardened superhero he was designed to be. He looks lost and scared and childish in a way that she’s never seen him before. Five is here, and alive, but he’s still another casualty of Vanya’s apocalypse.

She can’t be alone anymore, it’s eating her up inside, and Five is _right there_ after seventeen years. She already ruined everything else, and now she’s ruining this too. They used to be so close, but how can they ever be again? He’s only ever known her as quiet and innocent and now he’s seeing her at her worst and he missed all the middle bits, all the changes and ups and downs and how can he forgive her when she’s a stranger?

She wants to help him—she can’t sit by and watch Five struggle and waste away into nothing here. She has to do something, but he won’t let her.

God, she understands why. She _hates_ what she’s done, and there’s no way for her to take it back. She destroyed the _world._

But wouldn’t it just be so much better, so much easier, if Five just listened to her? If he let her be his sister again? It was still so deeply ingrained in her. It physically hurt to have him so close and watch him slip through her fingers.

She’s still hovering over Five when he lets out a soft keening noise that makes her heart clench inside her chest. Still fast asleep, his face twitches and his hands clench around empty air as he continues to whimper. Letting her instincts take over, Vanya shrugs off her suit jacket and lays it across Five’s prone form.

“Shh,” she hushes him gently, brushing her thumb across his temple as she pushed his hair off of his forehead. “It’s alright, Five. I—I know you hate me, and you don’t want be around, but I promise I won’t abandon you. I won’t let anything happen to you, Five. If I can save one person, if I can do one thing right, I’m going to make sure you get through this. You’ll find your way home, Five, I know it. And I’ll do whatever I can to help. Just—just try and let me help you. I can’t fail you too.”

When the whimpers go silent, Vanya reluctantly pulls away from Five. He still doesn’t look content, but he’s calmer and still now, and she figures that’s the best case scenario here.

Five doesn’t want her there, but her body won’t listen to reason. Vanya settles down off to the side, just more than arm’s length away from him. She lays down and curls up on her side, watching the steady rise and fall of Five’s chest in the light of the fires. One of his hands instinctively latches onto the jacket, pulling it tighter around himself, and Vanya can’t help but smile at the sight.

“I love you,” she whispers, because he can’t hear her like this. “Even—even if you hate me…”

She continues to watch over him until her eyelids grow too heavy to keep going.

 

When Vanya wakes, Five is already up. She sits up blearily and blinks sleep from her eyes, suppressing a yawn. Five is standing, his back to her. She can see his shoulders shaking.

“Five?” she calls softly. He flinches, but doesn’t turn.

She shifts to her knees to get a better view of what he’s doing and sucks in a sharp breath. Five is standing beside the flames that lick at their fallen home, Vanya’s jacket clenched in his hand, outstretched over the fire.

“Oh,” she says, feeling a bit numb. Who was she kidding thinking Five would appreciate her comforting him? It’s not like that would change what she did.

“Why’d you do it?” he snaps, and she’s so shocked to finally hear his voice again that it takes her a moment to process what he’s actually said.

“You were asleep and I—”

“That’s not what I mean. Why’d you do… this?” He waves his free hand around at the wasteland.

“I didn’t mean to,” Vanya replies. “God, Five, I never wanted this. But I couldn’t stop—”

“I don’t know how I’m supposed to forgive that, Vanya. You killed them.”

“It was an accident. I lost control.”

“You still did it.”

“I know, but... I didn’t want to. It’s like… It’s like what happened to you. You time travelled and got stuck here, and it was your power that did it, but it was an accident and you never wanted it.”

“We’re not the same,” he growls. “You destroyed _everything_ , Vanya, and I can’t wrap my head around that. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do here. You can’t just act like this didn’t happen!”

“I’m not trying to, I just—”

“Yes you are! You think that if you can just tell me how you didn’t mean for this to happen that I can just accept that and move on and we can go about our happy little lives in the apocalypse and you don’t understand that that’s impossible!”

“No, I know it’s unforgivable—”

“It is.”

“—but I’m not asking you to forgive me. Just… let me help you. You don’t have to be alone here.”

“I am alone though,” he murmurs. “I’m the only one left.”

“I’m still here!” she cries. “And… and I’m so sorry, Five. I’m so sorry. You’ll never understand how much I hate what I did, but it… it got out of hand. It went too far and I lost control and can’t ever take it back but I’m so, so sorry. Dad suppressed my powers for thirty years and I couldn’t stop them. It was too much. Please, Five. Try and understand.”

He’s silent for a moment, then, “I don’t know how to do that.”

But when he drops her jacket, it’s into the dirt rather than the fire, so maybe there’s still a chance for them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oof. not too worry, they'll get a real chat eventually


	3. concerto

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ben dies.
> 
> Ben dies long before the apocalypse, just seventeen years old.

They establish a silent routine, circling in each other’s orbits but never speaking.

Okay, that’s not quite accurate. They do communicate, because no matter how cold and angry Five acts, he wants to talk to his sister so bad that it aches. And nothing has ever stopped Vanya from finding a way to breech Five’s emotional walls before.

So they do speak, just not in so many words.

Vanya talks without her words. She speaks in actions, silently handing a can of whatever she’s managed to scavenge for dinner to Five, letting her fingers brush softly against his because that’s the closest he’ll let her get to a comforting squeeze, creating a makeshift pillow for him out of an old jacket even though he acts perfectly content to just curl up on the ground, always keeping her eye out for things to write with and handing them over without a word when the latest marker dries out after his hours of nonstop scribbling. She’s always there, watching, waiting for an opportunity to be there for him. She doesn’t smile, but he doesn’t scowl.

Five takes a… different approach. About four days into their new existence, the pair stumble across a department store. Initially, they just planned to raid it for clothes and any other surviving oddity that could potentially be useful. But then, just before they head back out, Five spots her—a mannequin, just the top half, not practically useful to them in any way, but Five grabs her on a whim anyway.

He sits her near them at their camp that night, as if she were a third person joining them in their wandering throughout the apocalypse. It feels a little easier with her there. The knot in Five’s chest loosens just a little.

He’ll talk to Dolores. He needs some sort of outlet for all the words that build up inside of him just to die on his tongue when he chokes them back down. The world is too dead for silence, and he’s got to fill some of it, somehow.

Even if it means talking to a mannequin.

And it does have another advantage, even though Five will never admit it—what Dolores hears, Vanya hears. The words aren’t always meant for his sister, they’re usually just to get them out of his head, but sometimes Dolores is the perfect loophole. He knows Vanya always listens. He watches, each time he opens his mouth, for his sister to still in whatever she’s doing and brush her hair back behind her ear and lean ever-so-slightly towards him. She does it every time; it’s part of her silent language, the one that he’s learned to interpret with ease.

He’s not really sure how he feels about it, but he lets it be.

They’ve been wandering for just over two weeks when they find it—the library. It’s still partially standing and that alone is enough to make Five feel a little bit giddy. Both he and Vanya stare up at it. There are books, actual books, there and intact and it takes Five all of three seconds to decide that they’re never leaving this place. This is the apocalypse jackpot.

He sneaks a glance over at Vanya and can tell she feels the same way. She immediately starts forward, running her fingers along the delicate spines. Five catches himself actually smiling.

Then it all comes crashing down, harder than it has since that first night.

Five loves to read. So did Ben, and so does Vanya. They used to sit for hours in the library together, curled up on the couch or the floor, reading. Whenever one of them found something particularly interesting, they didn’t hesitate to announce it, and the other two would listen with rapt attention while they talked and talked. Five loved it. Those were probably his truly happiest memories.

And they're such a devastating contrast to the woman with him now. It’s moments like this where he simply cannot recognize his sister, cannot reconcile his Vanya with the woman who would destroy the world. It’s moments like this when he snaps his jaw shut and refuses to look in her direction. It’s moments like this when he remembers how much his world has actually fallen apart.

 

Their eighth day in the library, he finds Vanya’s book. He’s taken a bit aback by the fact that it exists—it’s a ballsy move for Vanya, spilling the family secrets like that, something much more indicative of brash, arrogant Five than quiet, timid Vanya. He has to wonder what else has changed since he disappeared, so he settles in to read.

Vanya watches him read, staring even more than usual. Unable to stand the burning of her gaze on him any longer, Five lifts his nose from the book with a glare.

Vanya frowns and lifts an eyebrow. _You know I could just_ tell _you what happened, right?_

Five’s glare deepens. _I don’t trust_ you _to tell me._  He trusts his Vanya, the one he knows from before he jumped. He trusts her more than anyone in the world. This just can't be the same person.

Vanya sighs.

He reads and he reads and he skips over the parts about himself and his own disappearance—he knows more about that than this Vanya anyways, no need to waste time with that, it's just practical, really—and he reads and reads and

_Ben dies._

Ben dies long before the apocalypse, just seventeen years old.

Five grips the book so tightly that some of the pages tear loose. Something splashes onto the pages, blurring and smearing them. He realizes numbly that it’s his own tears.

“No,” Five mutters. “ _No._ He’s not gone, Dolores. He can’t be.”

It doesn’t matter than Ben would have died thirteen years later in the apocalypse, it only matters that his brother’s dead.

He looks up at Vanya, wide-eyed in disbelief. She responds by burying her face in her knees.

That night, after Vanya drifts off, Five creeps through the remains of the library with the light of a beat-up flashlight. Ben was always reading, loved it more than any of them. It was his escape. Surely he’d read more in the four years between Five’s disappearance and his death, but Five still at least knows his old favorites by heart. He manages to locate a few of them, and a couple more new ones that Ben would probably have enjoyed given the chance.

He loads the books into a bag and sets off into the night.

It takes him several hours, nearly a whole day, to reach his makeshift graveyard, but he doesn’t stop once. He hates that it’s somehow a familiar feeling, kneeling amongst his family’s graves, but it is.

He digs in the ground beside Klaus’s marker until he has a decent-sized hole and gently deposits the books he brought for Ben. He buries them, watching the dirt trickle out of his hands to spill onto their covers. He wonders what it must have been like to do this with Ben’s coffin and that thought makes his throat tighten so painfully that he’s pretty sure he might actually stop breathing.

“I’m sorry,” he sobs, as he marks Ben’s makeshift grave. He has a real one, somewhere. Five wasn’t there. “I’m sorry. I should have been there.”

This time he doesn’t sleep among them, just stares into space in silent vigil while his vision blurs and his eyes burn. He stays there all night before getting up and beginning the long walk back to the library. It takes even longer to get back; he’s unbalanced and wobbly from lack of sleep and spending hours kneeling on the unforgiving ground and grief still tears through him in painful waves, forcing him to stop. There’s an awful howling noise, and he’s only vaguely aware that it’s coming from him. Better to get it out now, when there’s no one around, then for Vanya to see him like this. He’s pitiful and childish, still crying like this. He needs to grow up or he won’t survive.

He can’t do it.

 

When he finally returns, Vanya’s curled up in the corner of their little camp, knees hugged tight to her chest, one hand outstretched to clutch at Dolores’s stiff one. She’s face-down, forehead pressed into the dirt, but her shoulders are shaking violently so he knows she’s at least still alive.

“Vanya?” he whispers, breaking his self-inflicted no-talking rule, but this isn't what he expected to return to. His voice hoarse from emotion and disuse. He coughs to clear it.

At the sound, Vanya lifts her head and scrambles to her feet. She looks terrible. His sister is pale and shaky, cheeks even more hollow than before, eyes red-rimmed and puffy. Tear tracks cut through the grime on her face and display the dark bags under her eyes.

She staggers across the space between them, closing it in record time for someone who looks half-dead, and throws her arms around his neck, hugging him tightly against her.

“I thought you were gone,” she gasps into his shoulder. “I thought—” Her words devolve into sobs and something inside Five cracks. He can't do this anymore, the angry, uncaring facade. He's never stopped caring about Vanya, even now, when she's ended the world. He can't keep pretending.

“I’m sorry,” he rasps. “I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t—I shouldn’t have left like that. I’m sorry. I didn’t think—”

“I thought I’d never see you again. I thought you left me.”

“Never,” Five swears. “Never. I… I’ll never leave you again, Vanya. I’m so sorry.”

He’s surprised to find that he really, truly means it.

Vanya sobs and he holds her closer. It’s just the two of them left, against a world that threatens to drive them to insanity, a world that wants them dead. It doesn’t matter what Vanya’s done; it’s just the two of them left and they need each other.

 

That night, Vanya sleeps curled up against his side, her cheek resting against his thigh. It's a physical comfort that Five has been craving for weeks, but was too stubborn to initiate. He pretends like he's doing it for Vanya's sake, seeing how wrecked she was, but it's as much a comfort for him as it is for her.

Five reads by firelight, turning back the pages with trembling hands to the chapters he skipped about himself.

He feels guilty when he reads about the lights she left on and the sandwiches set out for him, just in case he returned. She talks absently about wishing she could show him the newest piece she’d been working on. Vanya had missed him. A lot. And he’d slipped away in the dead of night, abandoning her without a word of warning for the second time. He brushes his fingers through her hair, feeling the overwhelming need to promise her that he’ll never do that again.

It hurts, to read how Vanya’s life changed after he’d disappeared. She talked about how she missed him, how he was her only real confidante, how none of the others ever seemed to trust or understand her like Five. Five had never seen her as an outsider in their family. No matter how much their father tried to make her seem that way, to give them an “other” to stand above and apart from even within their own home, he’d always seen has as his sister, with her own strengths and flaws that had nothing to do with lacking powers.

Apparently he was the only one. Maybe the others tried to treat Vanya as a sister—Ben and Klaus especially—but Five had always been better at resisting their dad’s manipulations that the rest of them. Ben was dead, and Klaus had his own issues to deal with. Dad hurt all of them, and Vanya paid a part of the price for each of their own suffering.

He’d been ignorant, thinking that just because he was smart enough to know Vanya was a part of their family, the others would see her that way too.

They’d all ignored her, left her out of everything her whole life. They were rude and dismissive and belittling, seeing themselves as better, stronger, more important. Vanya was treated like dirt and Five had barely even noticed it. He’d thought… How could they not have loved Vanya? She was their _sister_ , kind and strong and wonderful and Five had never seen has as anything else.

And then he’d left, and thirteen year old Vanya had been left to grow up for the next seventeen years without anyone left to make her feel anything other than neglected. Even Grace, who of course loved Vanya just as much as the rest of them, was subject to their dad’s tampering. She was required to care for the others more than Vanya, because they were the important ones.

Vanya had been _so alone._

She hadn’t deserved what they did to her. She didn’t deserve to feel like nothing more than the dirt beneath their feet.

God, Five couldn’t have handled any of that. Dad was an awful person and a shitty father, but at least Five had always had a purpose, one he was proud of, even occasionally praised for. He had his powers, was always pushing himself to grow them. Hell, he’d even rejected a real name because he agreed with their dad on just that one thing: they were powerful, and they had a responsibility to be whatever the world needed that power for. He loved his family, but he had a different purpose in life.

Vanya had had nothing—no powers, no praise, no purpose—and everyone around her took the time to remind her of that every day. The violin wasn't a useful skill in their eyes. Five had always enjoyed listening to her play, but to everyone else, it was pointless and she was just as useless for it.

Five would have blown up the world before their fourteenth birthday if he’d grown up like that. Vanya held out for _thirty years_ before it became too much.

“I’m beginning to understand,” he whispers into the night, a gentle hand still brushing through her tangled hair. “I couldn’t have held out as long as you did, Vanya. You’re stronger than all of us, and I don’t mean your powers. It… it wasn’t your fault. No one could have stopped that.”

He’ll tell her for real, eventually, when he’s strong enough to face it.

 

He doesn’t notice the way Vanya stills suddenly against him.


	4. harmony

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She presses her hands over her ears. It’s nothing. It’s just Five, just her brother, snoring in his sleep. He’s sleeping, calm, not in danger. She’s not in danger. They’re both alive and here—

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey! thank you for all the wonderful comments :) they mean the world to me

For the first time in weeks, Vanya’s dreams aren’t made entirely of nightmares. Five told her—well, he didn’t exactly tell her, more like whispered it to no one when he thought she wasn’t listening—that he forgave her, that the apocalypse wasn’t her fault, and just those few murmured sentences had been enough to make her want to sob with happiness.

Of course, now she just has to wait for her incredibly emotionally-stunted brother to actually say it to her face. She doesn’t want to push him, not when he’s finally beginning to understand.

She has to wait, but waiting is so much easier with this newfound hope in her heart.

 

The only problem is that something is wrong with Vanya, and it’s making her itch. 

Deep inside of her, her power is beginning to stir again. She’s terrified that it’ll lash out. What if she accidentally hurts Five? What if he stops trusting her again?

She’s avoided using her powers, and in the three months since blowing up the world, they’ve only slipped out of her control twice: once, when they were still settling back down inside of her, and she smacked Five away like a ragdoll for calling her ordinary, and again when Five disappeared to mourn for Ben. The library had shaken violently in her panic, books and dust plummeting from the remaining shelves, and rain had fallen for the first time in weeks. She wasn’t sure if Five had even noticed the semi-destruction she hadn’t bothered to clean up. If he had, he hadn’t mentioned it. It’s probably too close to real feelings territory for Five, and to be honest, Vanya would rather just forget about the whole thing anyway.

Those were both cases of extreme emotion. Now, she’s calmer and steadier than she’s been in a while, and yet it’s _still_ stirring up inside of her. After decades of being suppressed, it’s trying to crawl its way back out of her any way it can, latching onto the tiniest little sparks of emotion for dear life. It's getting harder and harder to swallow back down.

Five can’t know. She knows that in the past he’s always seen her as someone innocent and naive and especially vulnerable, and she knows that seeing the aftermath of her incredibly display of destruction shattered that illusion. But it was a piece of the foundation that their childhood friendship had rested upon. Not the whole base, but enough to knock them to the ground when it was shaken. They're slowly making their way back, and she has to wonder if her avoiding her powers was what was helping them recover.

If he doesn’t see her as powerful, he won’t see her as destructive, and he won’t be afraid of her. He can forget she’s a monster.

If the power slips out, if he sees it, he’ll remember. He’ll leave. _Again._

“Here,” Five says, handing her the remaining half of a can of black beans. “It’s the best I could find.”

“Thanks,” she says. She smiles gently over at him, pushing down the wave of power that now accompanies even her happiness.

 

 

Sometimes, the apocalypse is far too quiet.

Vanya had originally thought it would be a blessing, nothing to overwhelm her or trigger her powers. But instead it just makes even the smallest sounds unbearably loud.

Five is just a few feet away, dutifully asleep. His soft snores permeate the quiet night air.

They stab white-hot at Vanya’s head.

She presses her hands over her ears. It’s nothing. It’s just Five, just her brother, snoring in his sleep. He’s sleeping, calm, not in danger. She’s not in danger. They’re both alive and here—

The sound just keeps building, filling her head until she could barely hear herself think. Her whispers turn to panicked screams as she struggles to regain control.

She can’t hear herself. She can’t hear anything but the pounding in her head and the rush of power under her skin.

“Vanya!”

There are hands on her wrists, tugging her hands away from where she’d been clawing at the skin around her ears. She blinks and blinks but she can’t see anything through the darkness and the blur of her tears.

The hands release her wrists and move to her face, resting firmly on her cheeks. Slowly, the world begins to right itself again.

“You’re alright, Vanya.”

“Five?”

“I’m right here. You’re okay.”

She lets out a shuddering gasp and nods weakly. Five takes that as his cue to release her face and for a moment the panic returns at the loss of contact, but quickly dissipates again when she hears her brother shuffle around to sit next to her. She reaches out to grab his hand and finds it already waiting for her.

“That’s the fifth time this month, Vanya. Do you want to talk about it?”

“What?”

“The shaking,” he says calmly. “It seems like it’s happening more and more.”

“I… I’ve done this before?”

“Yes. Hmm. I guess you were asleep the other times. I thought you knew. You always responded when I tried to calm you down.”

“I didn’t realize,” she whispers.

“Okay, well, do you want to talk about it?”

“You… you aren’t scared?”

Against her side, she feels Five shrug. “I mean, I guess in a distant sort of way. You _are_ crazy powerful, Vanya, but it’s not like you’re evil. You’re not trying to hurt me or anything. You just need a bit of help calming down is all.”

“They’re tied to my emotions,” she says, her voice small and unsure. “I can’t… I can’t control them.”

“Not yet,” he says, in his usual matter-of-fact tone. “But you will. We’ll figure this out. I can help you, Vanya.”

“That’s what… That’s what L-Harold said.” She can’t call him Leonard. Leonard was her friend, someone she trusted, someone she even thought she was beginning to love. Someone who she thought actually cared about her. Harold was who he really was—a murdering, manipulating psychopath.

“Who’s Harold?” Five asks.

“Harold Jenkins. He…” She latches on tighter to Five’s hand. Just thinking about him is enough to make their air around them shiver. “I thought… We got closer. He was helping me when I first discovered my powers. Actually, he pointed them out to me. Turns out he knew all along, even threw out my meds to jump-start everything. He was helping me learn control, but he really just wanted to use me as a weapon to get revenge on the rest of our family for him.”

“How could he possibly know you had powers?”

“He had a journal of Dad’s somehow. I don't actually know where he found it. Apparently, I was four when he realized he couldn’t control me so he started drugging me and got Allison to rumor me into thinking I was ordinary.”

“I’m sorry, Vanya.”

“It’s my fault. I—I can’t believe I let him use me like that. I can’t believe I fell for it. I just, I thought someone actually cared about me. I thought someone actually thought I was special.”

“I do,” Five says after a moment. It’s barely a breath, but it fills Vanya with a warmth she hasn't felt in a long, long time. No one has ever loved her as sincerely as Five used to. 

“I missed you,” she mumbles, leaning over to rest her head on his shoulder.

“I’m sorry.”

“Stop apologizing for not being there. It wasn’t your fault.”

“It kind of was. I shouldn’t have tried to time travel. I… I wasn’t ready.”

She knows how hard that is for him to admit, especially out loud.

“You’ll figure it out, Five. You’ll make it home.” And she believes it. She firmly believes that there’s nothing her brother can’t do if he puts his mind to it.

“ _We’ll_ make it home,” he corrects. “Don’t think for one second that I would leave you here, Vanya.”

She’s not quite sure if that’s logical, since she’s pretty sure that if Five could go back, he could find a way to stop her from ever destroying the world in the first place. If anyone could save her from herself, it would be Five.

But the insistence and certainty in his words mean so much more to her than anything else, so she doesn’t mention it. Tears leak from her eyes, falling gently onto Five’s shoulder and soaking into his jacket.

“I’m scared,” she says.

“Of what?”

“Me. My powers. What if—I mean Dad just completely gave up on me ever controlling them. What if I never do? What if it’s impossible?”

“It’s not impossible,” Five says firmly. “Dad was just an arrogant bastard that was too scared to try and figure it out. You didn’t fit his model of perfect, moldable superhero pets so he tried to get rid of you. It was the wrong move, but that’s not surprising because he’s a truly idiotic old man.”

“But how do you know that?”

“I just do. You gotta trust me here, Van. I’ll help you figure this out. You don’t have to struggle through this alone. I’ve done it, and it’s not fun. I’ll be there for you, from here on out, every step of the way.”

He sounds like Harold, but he’s _not._ He risks his safety to calm Vanya down when she’s shaking their camp in her nightmares. He’s offering to help her because he can see how scared she is of the power reawakening inside of her, not for his own gain. He wants to support her, not suppress her, not lock her away, not control her.

“I forgive you, Vanya. I want to help you. I—I care about you.”

“I love you,” she says, her voice half-choked by her tears of relief and overwhelming emotion. “I missed you so much.”

“I missed you, too.” After all, it’s been three months since she’s been the same sister that he knows.

Finally, they feel like family again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one's a little shorter, but look! They're bonding! Finally!


	5. etude

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Focus on what you want and don’t let anything else happen. You’re in control.”
> 
> Five sounds so confident, she can’t not believe him.

“Just breathe, Vanya. You’re in control, not your powers. It’s all you.”

With her eyes squinted at the heap of rubble swirling in the air in front of her, Vanya feels shaky and overwhelmed. When she’d first started practicing with Leonard, she’d felt ridiculously silly standing there with her hand out, but then her powers just kept growing and growing and there was no stopping them. Now, trying to keep herself in control was like trying to speed down the highway at eighty miles-per-hour with her feet on the wheel.

“Focus on what you want and don’t let anything else happen. You’re in control.”

Five sounds so confident, she can’t not believe him.

Yeah, it’s terrifying, but she follows her brother’s careful instructions, trading the sound of the heartbeat pounding in her ears for the rush of breath in and out of her lungs. It’s softer, less demanding, and all under her control. She can’t control her heartbeat speeding off like a runaway train, but she can make each breath careful and deliberate. She’s in control.

Gently, with a long, slow exhale, the rubble settles gently back on the dirt. She feels calm, more content than she’s been in a while.

When she turns to face Five, contentedness soars into genuine happiness. Five is staring at her with a massive grin, pride and childlike excitement shining in his eyes. It’s rare that he looks this genuinely happy. Even before the apocalypse, Five was known more for his snarky grins or sly smirks. This type of elation is much more rare.

“Vanya, that was incredible.”

“Yeah?” She can’t help but beam back at him. For all Five tried to act superior and lofty, thinking himself somewhat above the antics of his siblings, he had an infectious smile—maybe because he so rarely broke it out.

“Why would Dad ever try and get rid of your powers? That was amazing. And you said it has to do with sound waves? And converting them—”

“I don’t really know how they work, Five,” Vanya cuts him off, chuckling slightly. Five looks about three seconds from going full nerd, and she can’t have that if she wants to get a word in before sundown. The kid can ramble on and on if it’s something he’s interested in, something that had always filled those horrible, dreary childhood—and now post-apocalyptic—silences, but now’s not really the time. She’s sure he’ll talk her ear off later, and she’ll be happy to let him.

“Right,” Five says, nodding sagely and Vanya has to suppress her laughter because he looks so serious and thoughtful.

Of course he would try and reason his way through this, just like any other problem. This is the same kid who, when they were ten, tried to give Ben equations to help him manage the monsters and Allison calculations of how loud she should speak at different distances for her powers to have their maximum effect, as if any of the rest of them could make heads or tails of the numbers he kept spewing off. (Ben at least had appreciated the effort, Allison just stared at him like he was crazy.)

And sound really is just physics—no wonder he’s so fascinated. She can practically see the cogs turning in his head as he works through it, and based on the smile he’s still wearing, he thinks it’s pretty damn cool.

It’s incredible how much more physically comfortable she feels having let her powers out. Her skin has stopped crawling and it no longer bubbles around in her stomach like nausea. She feels giddy and powerful and, for the first time in a long time, _happy._

“I just wish I could have started learning about them sooner, you know?” she says wistfully.

It’s an understatement. She’s always longed to be a real member of the Umbrella Academy, playing and going on missions with the rest of her family. It had been hard to not even be a little mad at Five, because he still got to be a real part of the family. And it hurts, knowing that she could have had this all along. Five, cheering her on like this—she would give anything to have the rest of their family see this side of her, to grow up actually feeling special in their eyes.

“Yeah,” Five agrees. “And if we had better resources, actual training equipment…”

“Dad could have figured it out,” she says. A spike of anger shoots through her. “He should have tried harder.”

Five stiffens, his expression immediately hardening slightly. “No,” he says quickly. It’s not harsh, more panicked. “No, it wouldn’t have been worth it.”

“Wouldn’t have been worth it?" She can't understand what Five is saying. Does he... Would he still not want her to be part of the team? "I could have been trained with the rest of you. I could have been in control for years—”

“We don’t know that, though!” Five says. “Look at Klaus, he wasn’t exactly _in control_ , no matter how hard Dad tried. Reginald Hargreeves was willing to _break his own children_ for the sake of his ridiculous mission. I… I couldn’t watch you go through that too, Vanya. I watched everyone else train with that monster—knowing that you were okay, that you would always be okay, it got me through it.”

Five won’t look her in the eyes, his cheeks flushed red, his hands clenched into tight fists. Gently, Vanya steps forward to set a hand on his shoulder. He still flinches, just slightly.

“Was it that bad?” she whispers.

Five nods and sucks in a shaky breath. “It… it wasn’t anything I couldn’t handle. But… but for some of the others… Klaus, Ben, Diego… No, screw that. It sucked for all of them, Luther and Allison included. I know… I know you weren’t super close with them, so maybe you didn’t see the way they changed, but… It was so, so messed up, Vanya. I—I know you hated feeling ordinary, but I’m so glad you never had to go through that.”

“I’m so sorry that you did,” she says, pulling him into a hug. Five stiffens and then sinks into it, grabbing at the back of her jacket.

“I was fine,” he mumbles into her shoulder. “I could handle it.”

Vanya runs a gentle hand up and down his spine. “But you shouldn’t have had to.”

He pulls back after a moment, but grabs her shoulders firmly, his fingers digging almost painfully into her skin. “You will _never_ train with him, Vanya. Never. I won't let it happen.” His eyes are watery, but his jaw is set and she can see sheer determination written across his face.

Vanya nods back, at a loss for words. She’s always known Five had this fierce protective streak in him, hidden beneath his hardened exterior, but never before has it been aimed so directly at her. Actually, it’s possible that Five has never been so explicit with the fact that he is willing to fight tooth and nail to protect the people he cares about.

She loves him. God, she loves her brother _so much_.

“I’m sorry,” she breathes. “I’m so sorry you had to go through that. I… I had no idea.”

He reaches up and tentatively wraps his arms around her neck. “It’s been really shitty, huh,” he mumbles against her shoulder. “For both of us. For all of us.” Her heart breaks just a little when she hears a small sniffle from her brother and she hugs him a little tighter.

They stay like that for a few minutes, probably longer than Five would ever willingly admit, but it’s the apocalypse, and they’re trying to heal and goddamnit—if that doesn’t warrant hugs, nothing does.

  
  


“Vanya, why don’t you ever play anymore?” Five asks.

“Huh?” she looks up from the book Five recommended her on the physics of sound waves to see her brother settle down next to her, her now-white violin in his hands. He sets the instrument across his lap carefully and gently runs his fingers over the strings, strumming once at the G.

The sound echoes in Vanya’s ears, sending a shiver down her spine. She still remembers the concert that ended the world. She’d been drunk on the power and freedom and an awful vengeance that completely overtook her. She had changed, become something she couldn’t even begin to recognize, and her violin had morphed right along with her. The whiteness was foreign and sinister, like the suit she’d long-since ditched. It sat in the corner of their camp, never seeming bothered by the ash or falling debris, just stark and white and untouchable.

She’s terrified of it. She’s terrified of what she’s made of it.

She should have gotten rid of it months ago, should have hurled it into the flames. Instead, she reaches for the instrument with reverent fingers. She hasn’t been able to part with it, even if she can’t bear its sight.

“I can’t,” she manages to choke out. She holds the violin upright in her lap, staring at the body. It seems to stare right back, beckoning, tempting, daring.

“Why not?” Five asks, and she doesn’t look at him but she knows his brow’s pinched up in that expression he gets when something isn’t fitting with his logical understanding of the world.

“I ended the world with this, Five,” she rasps.

“But you love playing. And you’re good at it. Incredible.”

“And that’s how I felt,” she says softly. It’s painful, talking about the apocalypse and the way she lost control. Five doesn’t blame her anymore—he even reassures her more often than not—but every time, the pressure builds in her chest until it’s painful and she can’t do anything but scream and cry until she relearns how to breathe. “When I was playing, and everything was coming down around me, and people were getting hurt—I didn’t care. I felt powerful and special for the first time in my life. I loved it. I hate what I’ve done now, but in the moment, I never wanted to stop. I can’t do that again. I don’t want to lose myself again.”

She thinks she can learn to control her powers on their own, but the violin gives her too much. It’s the perfect channel and it takes every emotion she’s feeling and magnifies it until it becomes an unstoppable rush of malevolent energy. The thing she used to love so dearly has become a weapon of mass destruction. She was so proud of the beauty she used to create—and with no support, no one else who saw what she was capable of—that pride, that she’d been so starved of for decades, it had consumed her.

“I don’t think you’d lose yourself,” Five says calmly. “I mean, you already had your big blow up. What are the chances you go nuclear again?”

“What? Of course there’s a chance! I’m—I’m dangerous, Five!”

“You were hurt,” he argues, “and angry. Are you like that now?”

She hesitates. Is she? All that built up pain didn’t just go away with one outburst, even if said outburst had been massive—and catastrophic. But it doesn’t feel so sharp now, more of a dull ache, a lasting regret, a passive wish that things had been different.

What is there left to be angry at? She’s destroyed it all.

There’s just Five left. Five, who she loves more than anything, who she trusts and believes in and would do anything for. How can she be angry if he’s the only thing left to be angry at?

“No,” she says softly. “I—I guess not.”

“Then I guess nothing bad will happen.” As if it’s simple fact.

She splutters. “What? It’s not that simple, Five.”

“Why not? It makes perfect sense to me.”

“I feel like you’re oversimplifying all this. Human emotions are pretty complex—just because I’m not angry right now doesn’t mean playing won’t awaken something in me.”

Five frowns at her. “You’re not evil, Vanya.”

“I destroyed the world, Five.”

“But that wasn’t your fault,” he insists. “This is a chance for you to prove to yourself that you really are in control.”

“This is more than just levitation! The music, it magnifies everything and makes it impossible to control.”

“It’s not impossible to control, you’ve just never had the chance. Come on, Vanya. You _love_ playing. You and music are practically synonymous in my eyes. I just… I don’t think you should give up such a big part of yourself just because you’re scared something _might_ go wrong. Besides, there’s not really much else you could destroy here.”

“I could hurt you.”

“You won’t.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because I know you, and I trust you. Come on, Van. I really—I don’t want you to lose this part of yourself. Just, think about it, okay?”

She grumbles noncommittally, and Five smiles.

 

“Alright,” Vanya says, marching over to Five the next day. He’s kneeling on the ground, scribbling away on the wall, but he pauses to glance up at her when she interrupts. “I’ll play something. On one condition: you have to jump.”

“What?” Five stares at her like she’s grown a second head.

“You haven’t spatial jumped once since you got here, Five. Don’t think I haven’t noticed it.”

Five doesn’t like to admit that he’s scared, he never has. He’d always allowed himself to be slightly more vulnerable to Vanya and Ben, but even then, he’d never actually say it. It was just the occasional cracked facade when things got to be too much to bear. It was lingering back with her a bit longer than usual when he wasn’t quite ready to put on his arrogant, precocious mask and face their father head-on. It was letting tears fall instead of choking them back as he was bent over the toilet hurling his guts out after a particularly bad training session, when he could attribute his weakness to simple overexertion rather than misery and pain.

Five is strong. He won’t admit that he’s scared—but Vanya can still see it.

The last time Five jumped, he'd ended up in a wasteland.

Maybe he’s trying to tell himself that his powers are exhausted or that he wants to conserve precious energy, but she knows better. Five is scared, and Vanya hates it.

Jumping is a part of Five. He’s always pushed himself harder, always tried to go farther, be faster, do better.

She doesn’t want to see him be afraid of his powers the way she’s still afraid of hers. She doesn’t want him to be afraid of a piece of himself.

And they have so few things left to love in the apocalypse, why should he lose this too? Isn't that the same thing that Five has been saying about her music?

“I’m just being practical,” she says, going for a nonchalant shrug. He won’t accept a _feelings_ chat right now, that much she can tell. “How do you expect to time jump us out of here if your spatial jumps are rusty?”

Five scowls and she knows she’s got him. Her brother is truly a creature of logic.

“Fine,” he huffs, crossing his arms like a petulant child. “When do you wanna do this?”

“Right now,” she says. Before she can lose her nerve.

“Now? Why?”

“Why not?” She reaches down and grabs Five, hauling him to his feet.

“But I was right in the middle of—”

“ _Now_ , Five.”

She marches them over to the road, where there’s more open space for Five to blip around and Vanya to have some leeway in case she goes apocalyptic again.

“Ready?” she calls. Five nods, once. He shifts into formation, poising himself to jump. Vanya tucks the violin under her chin and raises the bow to hover just over the strings.

“Same time,” Five says. “Three… Two… One…”

Vanya’s bow lands on the string, her fingers immediately moving through the motions they know so well. Out of the corner of her eye, Five disappears in a flash of blue, and by the time she presses the next fingering into the string he’s back, stumbling through his landing right in front of her.

The determined look in his eyes melts into a broad grin as he beams over at Vanya.

She’s still scared, but the feeling of playing again is amazing. It changes everything about her, makes her feel strong, even erases some of the apocalypse-induced aches and fatigue. She feels _alive_ , even as she works through a simple scale.

And with Five smiling at her like that, something inside of her settles. It’s just like when they were kids and Five would look up from his book as she moved from one song to another, that same proud grin in his eyes.

She’s been playing for decades. She’s the master of her instrument. _Vanya_ , not the power that’s locked inside of her. Music still belongs to Vanya, not to the White Violin.

She laughs as she continues on to another scale, watching Five bounce around her. His jumps continue to grow steadier and steadier, and before she knows it, he’s pretty much back to his usual self. The only difference is, this Five is almost childlike. Back home, before he jumped into the future, his spatial jumps were always about practice and honing his skills. Every jump served its purpose. Now, he’s jumping for fun. Just like Vanya, he’s regaining a piece of himself, and he needs it. He needs something to make him smile here. He needs the small comfort, something to remind him who he is—he is more than just a survivor. He’s Five. He’s strong and passionate and uniquely caring. He likes to have fun, even if it sometimes takes the back seat to his training and equations, or manifests in excited rants about physics.

“You should slow down,” she says with a laugh, setting up to work through a warm-up exercise next.

“I’m fine,” Five calls back, landing with a dull thump a few feet in front of her.

She rolls her eyes. “If you puke, I’ll hate you forever.”

Five is no stranger to the nausea and unfortunate side effects that come with overusing his powers, but they’re actually especially dangerous now. They have limited provisions, and the last thing she wants is to add onto the already lingering hunger and dehydration. Hm, maybe she should have thought this through more. It’s not like she could trust Five to know when he needs to slow down.

“Well, I can’t have that,” Five says and surprisingly stops jumping and plops down unceremoniously on the ground in front of her. “That sounds great, by the way.”

“They’re just warmups, Five.”

“Well, fine! Sorry for trying to compliment you. Play a real song.”

“Maybe… maybe you should move. I don’t want—If I lose control, you could get hurt.”

Five rolls his eyes. “You’re not going to lose control. You haven’t so far.”

“These are just warm-ups, though! When I play for real… That’s—It’s just different. I don’t want you to get hurt.”

“Then don’t hurt me,” he says with a shrug. “You’re in control, Vanya. I believe in you. You should have some more faith in yourself.”

“Five, _please_.”

“No.” He stares up at her defiantly with that shit-eating grin of his. “In your book, you talked about some piece you wanted to show me. I wanna hear it.”

“It’s been twelve years since I wrote that.” She still knows the piece though, remembers playing it and thinking how Five would probably really like it. Bach’s _Chaconne from Partita for Violin No. 2_. She’d learned it a decent amount of time after Five had left, and not only was the style something he’d be interested in, it was more advanced than the things she’d played for him when they were kids. She’d figured he would be impressed if he heard how much she’d grown. Five was one of the only people she’d ever felt like she could show off to, which felt especially good considering the fact that Five was never impressed with anything that the rest of their siblings did.

“Come on, Vanya,” he urges again. “I’ve missed hearing you play. And you said you wanted to show me, so do it. You owe me this.”

“Fine! But, you have to promise me that if I start to lose control, you’ll jump out of the way. None of that getting up close and personal to try and calm me down. I want you to stay safe.”

Five rolls his eyes again—god, does he never get tired of that? “Fine, fine,” he grumbles. “Just get on with it, Van.”

She closes her eyes, sucks in a deep breath, and begins.

The music flows out of her, as naturally as breathing. She can hear Five sitting near her, the constant ash in the air having turned their breaths into slight wheezes as time has passed. She can tell he’s there, feels his gaze on her, feels his support and trust, and that support and trust and _love_ —it finds its way into her music just as easily as hurt and rage.

It’s… It’s the best feeling in the world. _This_ is who she was meant to be, not ordinary Vanya, not all-powerful destroyer-of-the-world Vanya. Vanya, the musician who was allowed to actually feel and be proud and love herself. Vanya, who loved and was loved right back. Vanya, who was _Vanya_ , not an unfortunate pawn in her father’s twisted games.

“I told you, Van,” Five says as she finishes the piece, lowering her bow slowly and letting the final notes resonate in her ears.

“Yeah,” she says, grinning. “You did. Why did I ever doubt you?”

“I have no idea,” Five says, and the seriousness of his tone makes her laugh.

“I know,” she says after a moment, “I know this sucks, but… I can’t help but feel like maybe we’re gonna be okay.”

“I _know_ we are,” Five corrects. “Don’t worry, Van. You just keep working, and I’ll figure out how to get us home, and everything will be fine.”

At this rate, Five’s confident grin just might single-handedly get her through the apocalypse.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I feel like I should give you a fair warning... you're all going to hate me after the next chapter... i've already got most of it written and well, just be prepared. That's all i'm gonna say...
> 
> Anyway, how about that good sibling bonding? And non-drugged Vanya actually getting to banter some with her brother--amazing. It's what they deserve


	6. dolore

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Over the years, they fall into a fairly steady routine.

Over the years, they fall into a fairly steady routine, which Five finds comforting, having grown up knowing only very strict schedules. It was nothing close to his life back home, but at least it was somewhat cyclical. It made him feel more grounded, less adrift, knowing what he should be doing at any given moment.

Five wakes up first. Usually. If he doesn’t, Vanya always lets him sleep in. It’s the sign of a particularly bad night if he sleeps through the rising sun.

If they can, they eat breakfast together. Sometimes they have to go without, if all their recent scavenging and bug-hunting has been particularly sparse. Even if they don’t eat, they still sit together in the quiet morning, taking the time to properly wake up and settle in. The silences are comfortable, and they’re eternally glad for each other’s company.

Then Five works on his equations, scribbling on walls and books and bouncing ideas off of Dolores. Vanya is always there, in the corner of his vision. She meditates for a while before practicing with her powers. Even as the years drag on, she still practices every day, even though she’s mostly in full control at that point. She needs to use her powers, and every time her technique gets a little bit better. Five rarely has to intervene like he did in the beginning. Vanya thinks the meditation helps. Five just thinks she’s more confident in herself, but he doesn’t tell her that. Whatever makes her happy, he’ll support in a heartbeat.

It’s Vanya that reminds Five to “take a damn break every once in awhile.” And by that, she means every day. Sometimes she has to physically pluck the lump of charcoal out of his hands, and he always scowls but never really minds. He’ll go crazy if he spends all-day, every-day with his head buried in his equations; Vanya keeps him sane.

 

They drift farther and farther from the home they’ve created, purely out of necessity as supplies begin to run thin, but still they always return. It’s become home.

They talk about nothing on these missions, play games of _What if?_ while they scour the wasteland—

 

_“What if we had different powers?”_

_“I like my powers.”_

_“That’s not the game, Five.”_

_“But mine are clearly the best. Why would I want anyone else’s?”_

_“Because in this_ hypothetical _situation, you can’t have your same powers. Now, whose do you want?”_

_“Ugh. Hm. Well, let’s see. Luther’s—lame. Diego? Not bad. Maybe? But I’d still way prefer my jumps… Not Allison’s, that’s too much dealing with other people—”_

_“But they’d do whatever you—”_

_“I don’t want to deal with other people, Van. They’re too annoying. Doesn’t matter that I can control them.”_

_“Alright, alright. Continue.”_

_“Definitely not Klaus’s. Or Ben’s. You sure I can’t keep mine?”_

_“Play the damn game, Five.”_

_“Fine. I’m taking your powers. Diego’s in second, the others can fuck off.”_

_“Watch your language, young man.”_

_“I am nineteen years old.”_

_“Just a baby…”_

 

_“What if you’d gone to college? You’d probably be graduating right about now.”_

_“Did you go to college?”_

_“I did. Studied music. It was alright.”_

_“Hm. I wonder if I would have gone. Dad had that whole superhero life lined up for us, but you said only Luther really stayed. I’m smarter than him, so I figure I wouldn’t have been dumb enough to stick around forever.”_

_“What would you study, you know, if you had gone?”_

_“Physics.”_

_“That’s too easy. What if you couldn’t study physics?”_

_“Why can’t I study physics?”_

_“I don’t know. There’s no physics department at your school.”_

_“Then why would I even go there? That’s stupid. There’s always—”_

_“Not here. They don’t have math either.”_

_“Wha—That’s ridiculous! Why wouldn’t they have math? You can’t just get rid of math, Vanya. It’s the foundation of_ — _”_

_“They just don’t have it! I don’t make the rules.”_

_“Yes, you do!”_

_“Oh yeah. I do.”_

_“Whatever. If I can’t have physics, you can’t have music.”_

_“But I literally did study music.”_

_“Doesn’t matter, Van. This is_ hypothetical _.”_

_“I hate you. Fine. No music? Maybe psychology? Or English? Or… This is too hard, Five. You go.”_

_“I refuse to pick.”_

_“That’s not—Five!”_

 

_“What if you had gotten a name?”_

_“I have a name. It’s Five.”_

_“That’s not what I mean and you know it.”_

_“I didn’t want another name, Vanya. I still don’t.”_

_“But what if you’d gotten one?”_

_“I mean, I could have, but I—”_

_“What if we all started calling you like Alfred or something.”_

_“That’s appalling, Vanya. Please stop. Forever.”_

_“Or like, Gus. I can imagine you as a Milton.”_

_“You can not! Vanya!”_

_“Ooh, what about Seymour?”_

_“I hate you. Never speak to me again.”_

_“Alright, alright. Sorry… Greg.”_

_“Vanya!”_

 

While Five gets back to work, Vanya practices her violin. Simply existing in the apocalypse has been rough on the instrument, but Vanya’s playing still manages to be one of the best things Five’s ever heard. He gets some of his best work done with her music in the background.

Again, it’s up to Vanya to force Five to stop towards the end of the day. Time flies by while he’s working—or at least, it goes by as fast as it can in a post-apocalyptic world.

 

They have all the time in the world to try new things now. Vanya tried teaching Five a bit of violin, but he was fairly hopeless at it, even if Vanya insisted that he would get better. He wasn’t a big fan of not being immediately proficient at something, so he’d left the music to Vanya.

Vanya has more free time than Five, since he spends most of his day with his nose buried in potential equations to get them home. Finding new hobbies keeps her from feeling too restless and stagnant, which in turn helps her control her powers. For a while, she would draw silly pictures in the margins of books. They weren’t very good, but Five always suppressed a smile at the sight of them.

Vanya had eventually turned to sewing and embroidery, using extra supplies they found during a supply run in a half-collapsed house. That one she stuck with, and was getting pretty good. Five lets her practice on any extra fabric they had, which often meant his own spare clothing.

Sometimes she composes. She has a real talent for it, and she always names her pieces silly names that leave them both grinning like maniacs. Five knows she wishes she could do it more often. She needs her violin the way Five needs his calculations. It’s grounding, it gives her purpose, gives her control. But it’s a delicate instrument, even for something that survived the apocalypse. She has to be careful, can’t play it too much. She has to ration out the thing she loves most, physically restrain herself from playing, or else the instrument will die completely, and a piece of her will surely go with it.

Mostly though, their free time is spent burying themselves in all the books that surrounded them. Every evening, they read, just for fun. It’s designated reading time, has been for most of their years there. They were slowly working their way through the entire library. If Vanya read a book first, she would usually leave little comments for Five to find scattered throughout the pages. Five circled and underlined parts he thought Vanya would particularly find comforting or encouraging. If either one of them found something particularly interesting or infuriating, they were fully expected to immediately start ranting about it. The other one would set down their own book and listen intently in silent support. It made it easier to forget where they were.

 

Of course, their years in the apocalypse aren’t without hardship. They constantly teeter on the edge of starvation and dehydration and their little camp can’t protect them completely from the harsh elements. Hunger pangs have become old friends, as have the constant fatigue of dehydration and the burn of ash in their lungs.

They both get sick, multiple times. What Five thought was just a cold turned into something much worse. He was asleep for three days; Vanya thought for sure he was going to die. He’s not sure how he didn’t.

Vanya caught it too, caring for Five in his fever. Luckily, her immune system was a bit stronger than his, and her condition never got as bad. Still, Five had been weak from his own recovery and terrified for his sister. He slept with his fingers curled around her wrist to make sure her pulse stayed steady.

They get hurt, too. Skinned knees and torn palms are practically the norm, but even the smallest cuts are panicked over, since they have virtually no way to treat infection besides washing them with alcohol. Neither of them think that’s really the best treatment option, but it’s the best they can do.

And then there’s the nightmares. They’d long since made the best of a horrible situation, but that didn’t stop everything from haunting them at night.

Five dreams of leaving a lot, arriving alone and terrified in the apocalypse, and of the faces of his dead siblings, screaming at him for abandoning them. Sometimes he sees a Vanya that can’t control herself. Sometimes he dies right alongside his family. Sometimes he dies alone. Sometimes he kills Vanya before she can kill him.

Sometimes he manages to save his family—all of them—but those dreams are arguably the worst, since he wakes up to a dead world and the reality of it all comes crashing back down. Those make him feel so _empty_.

Vanya, from what she’s told him—and she’s usually more open about sharing her nightmares, shaking and desperate for comfort—usually dreams of being alone. Old memories haunt her, memories of her lonely childhood and of destroying the world. And there have been multiple nights where she’s woken up screaming for Five, him having disappeared again in her nightmares.

They always get worse near the anniversary of the apocalypse, the eleventh of which is rapidly approaching.

They’ve been in the apocalypse for eleven years. Five is twenty-four, taller, with facial hair that’s too difficult to manage without the proper supplies or anyone to teach him. Vanya is forty, her hair beginning to grey and the lines on her face already showing, deepened by stress and the harsh sun. They both look older than they actually are, skin torn and scarred and leathery, their too-skinny bodies hidden under layers of grime and protective clothing.

Still, at least they have each other. And they’re still alive, against all odds.

  


Guilt had kept Vanya up most of the night, so Five isn’t surprised when she nods off halfway through her practice session. She snores softly, curled up on the ground, and Five smiles and leaves her be. She should take advantage of whatever rest she can get.

It’s not ten minutes later that the world begins to shake.

Five knows what to do, he’s been doing it for years, even way back at the beginning when they weren’t talking.

He sets down the book he’s scribbling in and makes his way over to his sister. She’s curled up on her side, hands fisted tightly, brow pinched. Small whimpers escape her lips as she starts to twitch in her nightmare.

Five crouches next to her, gently smoothing her hair back from her forehead and carding his fingers gently through the tangles. She whimpers again, tossing her head, so he thinks this might be one to actually wake her up from.

“Hey,” he says softly, cupping her face and shaking her shoulder lightly. “Hey, you’re okay, Vanya. It’s okay. I’m right here. You’re okay.”

Her eyes fly open with a sharp inhale.

“Hi, Van. You’re alright. I’m right here. You’re alright.”

She’s still gasping and hyperventilating, still thrashing slightly, and she’s looking around with wide eyes for something Five can’t see. He helps her sit up shakily and grabs her cheeks so she has no choice but to look at him.

“You’re okay,” he says again. “You hear me, Vanya? You’re fine.”

“Five?”

“That’s me,” he says with a small grin. “Hey.”

“Hi,” she says weakly. There are tears still running down her cheeks. “I’m sorry. Was I—”

“Just a little bit, nothing to worry about.”

It’s a bit of an understatement, since this was the strongest her powers have accidentally been in a long while—when she’s awake, she’s got full control. But he’s not going to tell her that. He doesn’t want to shake her confidence..

“Do you want to tell me what you were dreaming about?”

Vanya jolts up and throws her arms around his neck so suddenly that it startles Five, but he doesn’t let it show, reacting immediately to pull her in. She’s trembling, sobbing into his neck. Distantly, Five is aware of the waves of power still rolling off of her, but it’s far more important to help his sister than worry about that right now.

“Hey, hey. You’re okay.”

“I… I killed you…” she gasps. “You were there, the first time, and—and I watched you die. I never wanted to—”

“I know,” he hushes her, rubbing slow circles on her back. “I know. You would never hurt me. You never meant to hurt anyone. I’m still right here. I’m not going anywhere, Vanya, _ever._ It was just a dream, just a nightmare. I’m okay.”

She nods against him, sniffing loudly.

“Thank you, Five,” she whispers. “I—”

Vanya stiffens and gasps suddenly, her head snapping up.

“Five!” she cries, her voice suddenly strong. “Look out!”

Before he can even figure out what he needs to look out for, something is slamming into his chest, sending him flying back. Five rolls as he lands and comes to rest in a heap, his head spinning.

He slowly regains his bearings, pushing up onto his feet before the world stops swirling dangerously. He tries to stumble towards Vanya, except with his still slightly-blurred vision, he can’t find her.

“Vanya?” he calls out.

He gets a choked gasp in response, something halfway between a groan and a sob. He clings to it like a lifeline, stumbling towards it as fast as his unsteady legs can take him.

That’s when he sees it, and he feels sick for a completely different reason. The aftershocks of Vanya’s nightmare-driven tremors had continued to send out waves of destruction. Nearby mass piles of rubble had shifted and a still-standing wall had cracked right down the middle.

A telephone pole had fallen.

And Vanya has only just managed to throw him clear of the danger. She wasn’t so lucky.

“No,” Five breathes, staring with uncomprehending eyes at the spot where Vanya had been. “No, no, no, no, no—”

Adrenaline and panic coursing violently through his veins, he races forward and hauls the pole off of her, his fear turning into a strength he shouldn’t have had.

“Vanya!” he cries, falling to his knees beside her.

She’s still breathing, she’s even conscious, and Five nearly heaves a sigh of relief before he gets a better look. There’s blood, too much of it, pouring down the right side of her face. It’s a head wound, a bad one.

But the worst are her eyes. At the sound of Five’s voice, she groans slightly, trying to find him. Her eyes won’t focus; they’re half-lidded and glazed-over and Five isn’t sure she can see him even as he leans over her.

“I’m right here, Vanya,” he says, just to be sure. Vanya tries to nod, but her head slips weakly to the side. Five rights her with a gentle hand on her cheek. “You’re gonna be okay. Just… just hold on, alright? Focus on me.”

“Five,” she says weakly. It’s barely a whisper.

“I’m right here. I’m not going anywhere. Just hang on.”

“Tired,” she huffs out.

“No, no, no,” Five says harshly. “No way, Vanya. Stay awake.”

There’s too much blood. There’s too much damage.

There’s absolutely nothing Five can do for her.

“Please,” he sobs. “Stay with me, Van. I can’t lose you. I don’t want to lose you. You… you have to stay with me. _Please, Vanya_.”

“Five,” she says again. “I… sorry.”

Vanya blinks sluggishly and sucks in a shaky breath. Then her chest falls still. Five doesn’t even realize he’s holding her hand until it goes limp in his.

“No!” Five howls. “No! Vanya!” He’s shaking her over and over, as if he can somehow wake her up from this.

He stands up abruptly, staring down at her still form in shock, before taking a few stumbling steps backwards. His hands move constantly, restlessly. He doesn’t know what to do.

What is he supposed to do now?

This can’t be happening this can’t be happening this can’t be happening

“ _No, no, no, no, no_.”

His hands curl into fists and he pulls relentlessly at the fabric of time, trying to summon up the power he so desperately needs.

He has to go back. He needs to stop this. He can’t do this without Vanya. He has to back.

_He has to go back._

But it’s not working. It never works.

“No!”

He stumbles back to Vanya’s side, knees buckling to fall harshly onto the ground beside her. He wipes fruitlessly at the blood on her face, searching her eyes for any sign of recognition, any spark of life. There’s nothing, just emptiness as she stares up at the sky behind him.

“Vanya,” he whispers. His tears fall on her cheeks. “ _No._ You… you can’t leave me. _Please_.”

  


Five is alone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> IM SORRY  
> pls don't hate me (but if you do, i get it)
> 
> here's the thing-- the commission wouldn't have wanted vanya. she couldn't be turned into a killer. also, they wouldn't want a five that has his sister as support system--they need him desperate and vulnerable so they can manipulate him. so even the other option, where five abandons vanya to work for the commission (which that would also be HEARTBREAKING), wasn't going to work.
> 
> BUT- rest assured, this is temporary character death (we will be seeing vanya again VERY soon)
> 
>  
> 
> i made myself sad anyway


	7. diminuendo

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This should inspire him, fill him with renewed need to make it back, stop all of this from ever happening. But it doesn’t. That ambition is buried too far inside his heart, smothered by the grief and desolation.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> quick warning for five very briefly considering giving up. not really suicidal thoughts and definitely nothing explicit, but just something to be aware of

It happened too quickly _._ He’d just been working on equations, Vanya was just supposed to be relaxing…

And now she’s dead.

Vanya joins the rest of his family, right next to Ben. She’d like that, he thinks. They always did get along. He marks her grave with her violin.

(It takes him nearly seven days to reach the others, pulling Vanya’s stiff body behind him on his little red wagon. Every bump she hits sends a wave of debilitating grief painful enough to knock him off his feet.)

This one hurts the worst. It’s impossibly painful, worse than anything he’s ever felt before. Days later he’s still struggling just to breathe.

He just sits there, doesn’t even count the hours, although he knows they turn into days. He doesn't count those either. Five just barely exists, curled up on the ground, surrounded by his family. The tears stop coming, the hours run together, time ceases to matter. He feels numbs and in agony all at the same time. He still doesn’t move.

He’s dehydrated, starving to death, and he knows that he has to do something. He can’t die here. He has a job. He has to save his family, and he’s never been one to give up on anything he put his mind to.

So why does it feel so impossible to keep going?

This should inspire him, fill him with renewed _need_ to make it back, stop all of this from ever happening. But it doesn’t. That ambition is buried too far inside his heart, smothered by the grief and desolation.

It’s Vanya that shakes him out of it. He can hear her so clearly and the world is such a blur around him that he almost thinks she’s real.

_You have to get up, Five._

He scrambles dizzily to his knees, looking around frantically.

“Vanya?” His mouth barely manages to form the word, his throat is so dry. Only her violin stares back, the holes like eyes, dead and empty.

He squeezes his eyes shut, ready to drop back into the dust.

There she is again.

_You can’t do this._

Why not? He can’t move, he can’t breathe. He just wants to sleep.

_This isn’t you, Five. You’re stronger than this._

He doesn't feel strong. He feels weak, weak,  _weak_ _._

_You aren't weak. You’re the strongest person I know._

Not anymore. Five’s strength came from his family, from the desperate need to protect them. Keep the attention on himself, let dear old Dad know exactly what he thought, _keep them safe_. He was strong because he needed to be, because they’d needed him to be.

No one needs him to be strong anymore.

_You always promised you were going to save them. You still can._

He can’t. He failed. He failed them all.

_You could never fail me. And you haven’t failed them. You have to keep going, Five. Find your way home. Find your way back to us._

What if he can’t? He’s back to square one, anyways; his equation had been meant to carry both him and Vanya, and it would have to be completely different now that he’s alone. Eleven years of work, up in flames.

 _You have to try, Five. You can’t stay here. You can’t help anyone if you stay here. You’re dying, Five. You need food and water and proper rest. You have to take care of yourself, because I’m not there to do it anymore_ _. I'm so sorry, Five, but I need you to do this on your own._

He can’t. It’s so hard. It’s impossible. He’s never felt so lost and alone.

_You have to find a way, Five. For me. For all of us. Just start small—stand up._

Her voice is soft and gentle, the same one she used to ease him out of his own head when he started to get too lost in his work, the same one that he clung to as she helped guide him out of his nightmares. He follows it, just like he always has. There’s no one he trusts more than his sister. He stands on wobbly legs, just for her.

_Good. Now, go. You need to find food and water. There’s nothing for you here, Five._

How can she say that? Of course there’s something for him here. _Everything_ he’s ever loved is right in front of him.

_But you could have more, Five. You could have us back if you just figure out the right equation. You have to leave so you can see us again._

He takes one step, then another. He jumps to his wagon and crumples hard onto the ground, but manages to push himself back up.

When he’d placed Vanya in the wagon, he’d wanted to make sure she was as comfortable as possible. She’d been laying on top of a ratty blanket, a thick coat draped over her like a blanked, its collar and sleeves decorated by Vanya’s experimental embroidery. It was one she’d seemed especially proud of, intricate blue and white swirling patterns that she’d explained were inspired by Five’s jumps. He’d wrapped the coat around her before he buried her, so it was gone now. Hopefully it brought her some comfort.

He’d also tucked his duffle bag behind her head as a makeshift pillow. Inside was mostly old clothes to provide some semblance of stuffing, but he’d just packed that around the few supplies already stashed in there. There was water, collected and boiled and stored in a jar. He tossed the lid to the side and poured the warm liquid down his throat, suddenly realizing how horribly dry it was.

He had no food packed, but hopefully the water would at least provide him with enough renewed strength to hunt down a cockroach or two.

It was a long walk home.

 

Vanya’s voice doesn’t follow him outside of the graveyard. She stays behind, reunited with the rest of their siblings. He hopes they’re happy. It’s been so long since they’ve all been together. He hopes they understand why he can’t join them yet.

He likes to think that they’ll miss him though. He misses them after all, feels it like the loss of a limb.

He doesn’t visit their graves again; he has far too much to do. It’s all for them, everything he does. Every mad equation he scribbles out, every cockroach he counts as a pitiful meal, every single breath he takes—it’s all for them. He _lives_ for Vanya. And for Ben and Klaus and Diego and Allison and Luther.

And he won’t fail them.

 

He talks to Dolores more and more, until one day he realizes that he’s fallen in love.

She’s his anchor in the sea of death and destruction, the most beautiful thing in this world.

He clings to her when the nights get too dark and the silence cuts like a knife.

 

Sometimes he forgets his mission. It’s days like that where everything goes blank. The world blurs and continues raging around him, but Five doesn’t notice a thing. The charcoal lump falls from his hand as everything disappears and Five goes utterly blank.

By the time Dolores’s voice manages to cut through the haze, the sun is usually setting. His joints are stiff and his muscles jelly—he doesn’t know how long he was gone; could have been hours, could have been days.

He snaps immediately back to work.

 

A woman appears, dressed in black and carrying a briefcase. She makes him an offer.

Why didn’t she come earlier? Why didn’t she come twenty years earlier, back when Vanya was alive?

She could have come at any time, back when Five was thirteen and not yet hollowed-out by his decades of isolation, back when he and Vanya were thick as thieves and Five’s heart wasn’t shrunken and cold from disuse, back when he still remembered what it was like to feel anything other than monotony and the numbing power of alcohol.

He wants to scream at her, demand answers that he already knows.

He knows exactly why. He knows he can’t trust this woman, can’t trust her agency. He can see straight through her deceptions. She waited until he was desperate and verging on insane. She waited until she thought she could manipulate him. He could hear it in her voice, see it in her saccharin offers.

Too bad for her that he can’t be manipulated, that he isn’t quite broken yet. After all, Five has a mission.

And he won’t ever fail.

 

They turn him into a killer.

He’d been a hero in his childhood and a survivor for most of his adult life. He’d been smart and clever and cocky and yeah, he’d been a damn good person to have on your side in a fight, but he hadn’t been a murderer.

He’s good at it, good enough that it seems almost as if this is what he was born to do.

He’s losing himself. He’s losing everything Vanya knows him to be.

He feels himself grow more and more unclean each time he pulls the trigger. He does eventually grow numb to it, knows that this is what he has to do to save the world, but there’s always a voice in the back of his head whispering that this isn’t the way to honor Vanya’s legacy. He thinks it might be her voice, but he doesn’t remember it well enough to tell.

She’d lived the last eleven years of her life in remorse for all the destruction she’d caused. Now Five is the killer, using a twisted sort of math to justify his murders. Would it be hundreds dead or would it be billions?

It’s simple enough to calculate; even his idiot brothers could manage to do it. To save the world, to save his family, he has to become a killer.

Better him than Vanya. He won’t let her lose herself this time.

Her book burns a hole in his pocket, making sure he always remembers why he’s here.

 

He breaks his contract in favor of a much older promise. His family is waiting for him, after all.

Dolores kept telling him that the equations were off, but it doesn’t matter. He can’t wait any longer. He has to stop the apocalypse. Save his family. Save Vanya.

This is it. This is the one. It has to be.

The air glows blue and he fights and fights, screaming as he strains not to be spat back out, as his atoms struggle to find the form to take on.

He falls hard, dropping several feet to the ground and knocking the wind out of himself. A bit shakily, he pushes himself onto his feet, looking around.

They’re _here._ His family, for the first time in decades. Whole and _alive._

And there, in the back, peeking around her much larger siblings is Vanya. Whole and alive, and much younger than when he last saw her. She’ll get a second chance, Five plans to make sure of it. After all, he’s only been thinking of how to save Vanya for the past forty years.

“Does anyone else see little Number Five, or is that just me?”

Klaus’s questions snaps him out of his dazed processing.

Wait, _little_ Number Five? What’s he—

Five suddenly feels physically overwhelmed, drowning in his own clothes. He looks down.

_“Shit!”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> here we go! the end of part one
> 
> some of these chapters might take a little bit longer since i have to juggle more characters and subplots


	8. rubato

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He should start looking for the journal. He should start going after Harold Jenkins.
> 
> “I’m in the mood for some coffee,” he says. “Want to join me?”

He blames the childish urge to throw his arms around his sister and never let go on his new body. Old body? Whatever. It was inconvenient no matter how he described it.

He needs to focus.

“What’s the date?” he asks. “The _exact_ date?” He needs to know if he has enough time. He has a rough plan (see: find Dad’s missing journal, kill Harold Jenkins, ease Vanya into discovering her powers and helping her safely learn to control them), but some of this is easier said than done. Vanya couldn’t tell him where Harold got the journal, and she’d never really wanted to talk about the guy at all, so he wasn’t sure where to find him.

He’d have to stay near Vanya and wait for him to show up. It’s not an excuse to spend time with his sister. _It’s not._ It’s just practical, that’s all.

“The twenty-fourth,” Vanya answers. God, it’s so childish the way just hearing her voice pulls at his cheeks, urging a genuine smile out of him.

“Twenty-fourth of what?” he asks.

“March.”

Alright. Eight days. He can do eight days.

“Good,” he says simply.

“So, are we going to talk about what just happened?” Luther demands.

Honestly, Five doesn’t really want to. At all. He’s missed his family a lot, but they’re also stubborn, hotheaded, and easily distracted. He’s not quite ready to start herding cats; he’s too old to fully deal with them right now. After all those years alone, he’s going to have to ease himself back into dealing with people.

Also, he’s a bit preoccupied with making his sandwich. He’s pretty excited actually; it’s been a long time since he had anything even resembling his favorite childhood food. He and Vanya used to reminisce about peanut butter and marshmallow sandwiches even after he forgot what they tasted like.

“It’s been seventeen years,” Luther continues when Five doesn’t respond fast enough for him.

“It’s been a lot longer than that,” he snaps, because he has to get _that_ out of the way right now. He’s not a child, and he refuses to let his siblings see him that way. He has much bigger things to do.

“I haven’t missed that,” Luther grumbles as he jumps behind him to grab the peanut butter and marshmallows from the shelf.

“Where’d you go?” Diego asks.

“The future,” he says simply. “It’s shit, by the way.”

He’s not saying any more, at least not to them. They don’t need to know about the apocalypse. Telling them would just get them all riled up and paranoid, and that feels like a self-fulfilling prophecy.

If any of them were to find out that it was Vanya’s powers that destroyed the Earth…

No, he’s the only one capable of fixing everything. The others will just mess it all up. He can fill them in on some of the bullet points _after_ he makes sure the apocalypse won’t happen. After he makes sure Vanya won’t lose herself.

“Called it!” Klaus shouts, and Five suppresses a grin. He’s missed his brother.

“Nice dress,” he says, finally glancing up and taking notice.

“Oh, well _danke_!”

“Wait,” Vanya interrupts. “How did you get back?”

He pauses for a second, unable to resist the shaky inhale as he tries to steady himself. Hearing Vanya’s voice after so long is overwhelming, simultaneously flooding him with giddy relief and stabbing at him like needles from a hundred different angles.

“In the end,” he says, once he’s sure his voice will stay steady, “I had to project my consciousness forward into a suspended quantum state version of myself that exists across every possible instance of time.”

They stare at him with blank looks.

“That makes no sense,” Diego finally says.

“Well, it would if you were smarter.” Damn, he’s excited for this sandwich. He wishes Vanya—his version of Vanya, the one he suffered and survived with—had gotten the chance to make it back and experience all the things they missed so desperately.

Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Diego shoot to his feet, looking murderous. Luther sticks out an arm to stop him, and Five resists the urge to roll his eyes.

“How long were you there?” Luther asks.

“Forty-five years, give or take.” Thirty-four years _alone._

“So, what are you saying? You’re fifty-eight?”

“No, my consciousness is fifty-eight,” Five huffs. It’s already getting frustrating, having to explain little details. He doesn’t have time for this, and it doesn’t bode well for when he eventually has to bring them in on the bigger stuff. “Apparently,” he continues, “my body is now thirteen again.”

He smashes the sandwich together and eagerly shoves it into his mouth. It’s not quite as good as he remembers—maybe he’s built up the taste of his favorite childhood food in his head, maybe it’s just been too long since he’s eaten something so heavy—but it tastes like home, and that’s the best thing in the world.

“Wait, how does that even work?” Allison asks.

“Dolores kept saying the equations were off,” Five mutters, letting his mind drift slightly back to her. He misses her, badly. “Bet she’s laughing now.”

“Dolores?” Vanya asks, her voice gentle.

Dolores, the only one left after he lost Vanya. Dolores, who got him through all that grief and pain and pure hell. He owes her everything.

He doesn’t say any of this, though. He still holds her so close to his heart, the last remaining piece of his soul.

“Guess I missed the funeral,” he says, glancing at the newspaper sitting on the table.

“How do you know about that?” Luther asks, narrowing his eyes.

“What part of _the future_ do you not understand?” he snaps. He doesn’t remember his siblings being this clueless. “Heart failure, huh?”

“Yeah,” Diego says.

“No,” says Luther, practically at the same time.

Really, they haven’t changed at all. It’s one part comforting, four parts infuriating. Already he feels like he needs to clear his head. He needs a bit of space. He longs to talk to Vanya, alone. He loves his siblings, and he missed them all, but it’s Vanya that had become ingrained in his very being, spending every moment together for eleven years. He saw all their dead bodies, but it was Vanya that he held as she faded away. It was Vanya that he clung to like a life raft and it was Vanya who was torn abruptly from him after becoming such an integral piece of his life.

 

The funeral just solidifies how ridiculous and childish his siblings are. They can’t go three minutes without fighting. Why did their father ever think they would be able to pull their heads out of their asses long enough to stop the apocalypse?

He stands beside Klaus, casting sideways glances at Vanya whenever he can. She’s so different like this, still on that horrible medication. He’s always loved her—she’d been his best friend—but the Vanya he got to know in the apocalypse was, surprisingly, so full of life. It was everything she was, everything he loved about her, just _more,_ no longer muted by drugs she doesn’t need.

He catches Vanya in the foyer, gazing at the door with a heavy sadness on her face.

“Hey,” Five says, approaching her. She looks over and smiles softly, her mouth closed. He knows that deep inside of her is a beaming grin and bubbly laughter, but it doesn’t fit with this downtrodden, lonely version of Vanya.

He should start looking for the journal. He should start going after Harold Jenkins.

“I’m in the mood for some coffee,” he says. “Want to join me?”

Apparently, he’s going to instead spend time with his sister. He can’t help it; the invitation just gets blurted out. Maybe it’s all the years of not having to contain his thoughts.

Maybe it’s because he’s really, really missed Vanya, and all he’s wanted to do for the past thirty years is get back to her—screw the apocalypse.

Vanya smiles with her mouth closed and reaches out to gently rest her hand on Five’s shoulder. He catches himself leaning into the touch, which he never would have expected after decades without any form of non-violent human contact. But this is Vanya, and it turns out all that loneliness wasn’t quite enough to wipe out eleven years of trust and vulnerability, even if this Vanya never lived it with him.

“Sounds great,” she says.

“What’s great?” Klaus appears behind them, tossing his long arms across Vanya and Five’s shoulders and leaning his head down between them. Five roles his eyes and shrugs his brother off, simultaneously stepping out of Vanya’s grip as well.

“Coffee,” Vanya says.

“I suppose you want to come along too, then?” Five says, raising an eyebrow at his brother.

Klaus grins, broad and goofy, and claps his hands together in excitement. “I’ll never say no to hanging out with my favorite brother. Other than you,” he adds, looking to the side at empty air. A flicker of a frown crosses Five’s face, but it disappears just as quick as it came. Klaus has always been, well… _eccentric_ is one word. Five’s missed a decent amount of his brother’s life, so he’s not going to start questioning every little thing without the full story.

He rolls his eyes again, but motions for both of his siblings to follow him.

“C’mon. I’m driving.”

“You know how to drive?” Klaus and Vanya say together.

“I know how to do everything,” he quips, feeling his old smirk tug at the corner of his mouth.

“Our little genius!” Klaus grins, reaching out to ruffle Five’s hair.

He ducks away, scowling. “Don’t touch me,” he snaps.

Klaus puts his hands up in surrender. “Alright, alright.”

Five shoots him once last glare for emphasis before spinning on his heel and stalking in the direction of the car. Vanya hurries to walk beside him and he casts her a soft smile. She looks confused for just a moment—frowning and tilting her head to the side—but then reciprocates the smile.

They end up at Griddy’s Donuts, because even though it’s been decades, it feels like instinct going back there, something ingrained in his muscle memory. He thinks back fondly on the nights when he snuck out with his family, stuffing their faces with donuts and reveling in the feelings of freedom and rebellion.

The file in single-file and plop themselves down at the counter. Five finds himself sandwiched between his siblings, both of them choosing to sit beside him. The waitress—Agnes, her name tag reads—smiles at them warmly.

“Hi, what can I get for you guys?”

“I’ll take one with sprinkles and one with custard,” Klaus says immediately. He turns to his siblings. “You guys have money, right?”

Five rolls his eyes and Vanya chuckles slightly. “Yeah,” she says. “I guess I got this.”

Five waves her off. “Don’t worry about it, Van. I can pay.”

The waitress gives them all an odd look. “Cute kid,” she says.

Five bites the inside of his cheek and shoots her a tight smile. To his left, Klaus chokes on air, so he figures he probably doesn’t fit the waitress’s description. Agnes’s own smile fades into an unnerved expression.

“I’ll take a glazed,” Vanya says, “and a latte.”

Agnes jots down their orders and turns to Five. “What about you?”

“Coffee,” Five says. “Black.”

Agnes blinks and shoots a look over at Vanya and Klaus, as if asking for permission. When neither of them protest, the waitress nods and heads to the back to get their orders.

Vanya turns to look at him, a ghost of a frown on her face. “I don’t remember your tastes being so…”

“—terrible,” Klaus finishes. “Black coffee is the devil’s drink. Where’s the fun?”

Five shrugs. “It’s practical. I’ve got a lot to do.”

“Like what?” Vanya asks.

Five purses his lips tightly, debating his answer. “I—”

Behind him, he hears the sound of the door opening, the bell jingling cheerily. Alarms immediately blare in his head, although he maintains his composure. Glancing at the reflection in the bell on the counter he spots several armed men, every one of them with a gun trained on his back.

He can take these guys, easy, without even breaking a sweat. The problem is, he’s got a sibling on either side to worry about. They’re not the targets, but they can get caught in the crossfire, or even used against him.

He has to keep all the attention on him.

“Hm,” he says, his voice light and easy. “That was fast. I thought I’d have more time before they found me.”

On either side of him, his siblings stiffen, casting confused and terrified glances in his direction.

“Five?” Vanya whispers, her voice wobbly. Five feels a flare of anger at the sound of it.

“Okay,” one of the men says, stepping closer to Five. “Let’s all be professional about this, yeah? On your feet and come with us. They want to talk.”

From the other direction, Klaus’s hand shoots out to grab his wrist, squeezing tight and protective, reminiscent of the way he tried to shield Five during the fight at the funeral. Little does he know that it’s Five that will protect _him._ Five won’t let a couple Commission goons touch a single hair on his siblings’ heads. Five jerks his wrist out of his brother’s grip. Although he appreciates the sentiment, it’s completely misplaced, and it only serves to further alert their attackers that these two are people Five cares about. The Commission knows how to exploit a weakness like that.

“I’ve got nothing to say.”

“It doesn’t have to go this way. You think I want to shoot a kid, go home with that on my conscience?”

“Well, I wouldn’t worry about that.” He glances in Klaus’s direction, winking at his brother. For a split second Klaus’s expression morphs from fear to bewilderment. “You won’t be going home.”

In a less than a second, he grabs the butter knife from the counter and jumps over to the man, driving it into his neck. He goes down with a howl, bullets from his gun exploding throughout the diner.

And everything descends into chaos. Luckily, chaos and Five work well together.

He hears Vanya scream and he’s at her side in an instant, pushing her down to take cover under a nearby booth, and motioning for Klaus to follow. The moment the men are able to track his new location, he jumps again, drawing their fire away from his siblings.

They’re not touching his siblings, _not on his life._

“Hey, assholes!”

They whirl on him, guns blazing, but he’s too fast. He reappears outside of the diner, knocking on the door to pull their attention again. The glass shatters, but he’s not behind it.

They can’t keep up with him. He blinks throughout the diner like a whirlwind, stabbing and slashing and tricking them into shooting each other. He grins to himself. They are _nothing._

He’s snapped abruptly out of his adrenaline-fueled high by a sharp cry of fear. One of the men—he’d thought the guy was dead, he thought he’d taken care of him already—has pulled Vanya out from under the booth, a knife pressed against her neck. Klaus is slouched a few feet away, his hand pressed against his upper arm, blood leaking from between his fingers.

They hurt his brother. They were trying to hurt his sister.

Vanya’s eyes are wide and terrified. Five did that to her. He was careless. He didn’t make sure the guy was dead.

He got Klaus shot. He got Vanya captured.

He can’t lose Vanya again.

That terror morphs into rage and he’s on the man in less than a second, driving his own knife into the bastard’s throat. He feels a sick satisfaction as Vanya slips from his grip and he falls to the ground, blood spurting and gurgling.

Vanya stumbles away from him, shaky and terrified, and Five instinctively opens his arms for her to fall into. She’s trembling all over, hands immediately fisted in the back of his jacket.

“It’s okay,” he murmurs into her hair. He feels forty years younger, helping his sister through the worst of her nightmares. “I won’t let them touch you.”

“What the hell just happened?” Klaus asks. He sounds woozy and Five pulls away from Vanya to get a better look at him.

He keeps one hand slipped in Vanya’s as he inspects the deep trench gouged in the side of his brother’s arm.

“Shit,” he growls. “Shit, shit, shit. Fuck.”

“Hey,” Klaus says weakly. Five can see him swaying on his feet. “Let’s watch the language, little dude.”

“Don’t call me that,” Five grumbles. He pulls Vanya over to Klaus and sets her hand over the wound. Klaus hisses in pain. “Put pressure on this for a minute. I gotta do something.”

“Five?” Vanya asks. “What’s going on? Who were those guys?”

“They won’t bother you again,” Five says. He stomps over and grabs a sharper knife from one of the bodies. Settling down at one of the booths, he rests his arm on the table and carefully stabs it into his skin.

Vanya and Klaus immediately light up with protests, but it’s already done. He tosses the knife away and digs around with his fingers, suppressing grunts of pain. His fingers close around the smooth capsule of the tracker and he pulls it from his skin with a sickening squelch.

“Come on,” he says, standing up and going back over to them. “We should get out of here. Either of you have a first aid kit?”

“Klaus should go to a hospital,” Vanya says. “You should too.” She stares at the deep cut in his arm, now dripping blood.

Five shakes his head. “They’ll ask too many questions. I can patch us up. I’ve done it before. Do you have supplies, Vanya?”

She nods slowly, still looking shell shocked.

“Good,” he says. “Let’s go.”

 

“Sorry,” Five mumbles as he carefully stitches the wound in Klaus’s arm shut. He hasn’t taken care of his own injury, just cleaned his hands off enough to work, so blood runs down his arm to pool in the crook of his elbow. He can handle it. Klaus comes first. 

“Who the hell were those guys?” Klaus asks from between gritted teeth.

Five hums. “They know I’m in the wrong time.”

“How could they possibly know that?” Vanya asks.

“It’s their job to know,” he replies, tying off Klaus’s stitches. “There. You should be good to go.”

“But who are they?” Klaus asks. Five hesitates, worrying at his lip. “Five, you gotta fill us in, here. I feel like we deserve to know.”

Five scowls. “You should have never gotten involved, either of you.” He shudders remembering the pure terror he felt at seeing Vanya with a knife to her throat.

“We should tell the others,” Vanya says. “There are people after you, Five. You’re in danger. They can help.”

“I don’t need any help,” Five says. “Besides, there’s nothing they can do. They’d just get in the way. You’re all liabilities.”

Vanya’s face falls and he immediately feels guilty.

“I just… I can’t risk any of you getting hurt.” He chuckles humorlessly. “Any _more_ hurt,” he amends. “This is my fight.”

Vanya appears by his side, gently tugging his arm into her lap and beginning to carefully clean and bandage it.

“Please,” she says. “Let us help. I mean… let the others help.”

He shakes his head. “I can’t—”

Vanya’s hand slips into his, having finished bandaging his arm. Klaus’s hand comes to rest on his shoulder. He shrugs his brother off and then reluctantly pulls away from Vanya too.

“I don’t understand what’s going on…” she starts. “I don’t know what you’ve gotten yourself into, but I just want you to be okay.”

He smiles at her tightly. “You don’t have to worry about me, Vanya. The best way for you to help me is to stay out of this.”

“You’re really set on this lone-wolf thing, huh,” Klaus says.

“I don’t need any help.”

Klaus opens his mouth to probably argue, but Vanya cuts him off. “Klaus, you should go rest.”

“But—”

“Five will still be here when you wake up,” she says, looking pointedly at him. “Right, Five?”

Five nods slowly. He will. He still needs to talk with Vanya, desperately.

But he knows it won’t be for long. He has to find Dad’s journal before Harold Jenkins can get his hands on it.

“We should _all_ get some rest,” Vanya says, looking at Five as Klaus moves to get comfortable on the couch. “Klaus, you take my bed if you want—”

“I’m fine,” Klaus says. His eyes are already closed, cheek pressed into one of Vanya’s pillows.

“Five?” Vanya offers.

He smiles at her weakly. “I’m good here too. Don’t worry, Vanya. I’ll see you in the morning.”

 

He waits until Klaus’s breathing has evened out into snores and the light in Vanya’s room has been out for several minutes before he clenches his fists and jumps.

He doesn’t have time to waste. He needs to find the journal.

He’ll be back before Vanya even knows he’s gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this... did not go the way I initially planned. huh. well, things really start to get interesting next chapter so get ready


	9. dolce

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “You know, the only thing that got me through of that, was the idea that one day I get to see you all again.”
> 
> “I left sandwiches out,” she whispers. “I turned the light on. I missed you so much, Five. I…”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> dolce means "sweetly," but don't let that fool you ;)
> 
> you all really have no faith in Five getting back before they wake up and like... ok that's fair
> 
> also, one important detail that may have been glossed over in past chapters: when they were in the apocalypse, the very few times Vanya talks about Leonard Peabody, she only refers to him as Harold Jenkins (which is a bit unfortunate for Five…)

In the middle of the night, Five tears his way through the Academy in search of his father’s journal. He remembers it from his childhood, always clenched tightly in his father’s hand as he scribbled his notes onto its pages, recording observations from his cold, calculating experiments.

His father’s study is isolated slightly from the rest of the building, proof that he held himself above them, a center from which he asserted dominance and control over every facet of their lives. 

“Fuck,” Five hisses, slamming yet another drawer closed. 

Nothing. Not a single sign of the damn journal.

He wishes Vanya had known how Jenkins got the damn thing, but she hadn’t stopped to ask for details, so he’s left in the dark. 

The only thing he can think is that this place has been ransacked before he made it in there. Maybe even before he made it back to this time. It’s already a mess, several objects thrown around haphazardly, some on the floor, some put back not quite in the spaces they belong. Not a lot appears to be missing, but he’s never actually set foot in this room before so he can’t be sure what all had been in there in the first place. 

He has his suspicions. If anyone were going to show up for a funeral and  _ immediately _ start rummaging around for things to steal, it would be Klaus.

He also knows that if Klaus did find the journal, he wouldn’t keep it, or even pay a lick of attention to it. It’s not something he’d really be interested in or be able to pawn off, and although his brother is a bit of a packrat when it comes to not giving up little odds and ends, Dad’s journal is probably the last thing he’d ever want to add to his collection.

Only two of the siblings would have been interested in the contents of that journal: Five himself, and Luther, who would never even dream of opening the damn thing out of misplaced respect—he’d probably just add it to his Reginald shrine or something. 

The moment the sun starts peeking through the windows, Five abandons his search. He’d promised Vanya and Klaus that he’d be there when they woke up, and he actually intended to keep that promise. Besides, he needed to speak with Vanya. About a lot of things.

He makes his way back to Vanya’s apartment, blinking through the locked door to see Klaus sitting up on the couch.

His brother jumps when he appears, an eyebrow shooting up into his hairline. “Huh,” is all he says. 

Five grunts at him. “I said I’d be here.”

“And I guess you are, although you weren’t when I woke up. I would have thought it was all a crazy hallucination but…” He nods at the bandage wrapped around his upper arm. Some blood has started to leak through so Five jumps into the bathroom to get more bandages and re-dress it.

“How’s it feel?” Five asks, wrapping his arm.

Klaus shrugs, disrupting Five’s first aid attempts and making him scowl. “Could be worse, I guess,” he says. “Are you ever going to explain who the hell those guys were and why the fuck they’d be after you?”

Five grits his teeth. “I already told you—they know I’m in the wrong time.”

“Ah yes, because that clears everything up.”

Five sighs, hating himself for what he’s about to say, but he has things he needs to get done, and personal feelings can’t get in the way of that. He’s already messed up, allowing the Commission to get anywhere near Klaus and Vanya.

“Klaus, listen. I need to speak with Vanya for a while.” Klaus blinks at him. “Alone,” Five specifies through his teeth. 

“Oh,” his brother says, his normally joking demeanor slipping away. Five hates it. He doesn’t want to hurt his family—he wants to reconnect with them, he’s spent  _ so many years _ trying to get back to them—but he needs to create a future for them where they get an actual chance to do that. 

“Look—”

“No, it’s okay,” Klaus says, empty laughter in his voice. “I get it.”

“No,” Five snaps, “you don’t. Look, Klaus, there’s just something I have to talk to Vanya about. It’s personal. We can… Family dinner. Or whatever. Get everyone together tonight at the Academy and we’ll… eat, I guess. Like whatever the fuck normal families do.”

Klaus snorts at that, then, “Will you finally tell us what the hell happened to you?”

Five hesitates, then slowly nods. He doesn’t intend to tell them anything, but they don’t deserve to be kept completely in the dark—he did just get Klaus shot after all. He’ll just have to come up with some vague answers to appease them. Shouldn’t be too hard.

“Dinner, tonight,” Five confirms. “All of us. You’re responsible for getting everyone there though. I don’t have time to worry about that.”

“Wait, wait, wait. They’re not going to listen to me! Tell them yourself!”

“I  _ told you, _ I don’t have time for that.” Five straightens up with a snap and shrugs. “Figure it out, Klaus. I can’t do everything myself.”

“Since when?”

Five’s scowl deepens.

Klaus grins back at him and tries to ruffle his hair, but Five jumps away to the chair on the other side of the room before he can make contact. His brother stands up, stretching dramatically. “Guess I’ll go try and wrangle the herd of cats we call siblings, huh?”

Klaus’s hand is on the doorknob when Five opens his mouth to speak. “I’m sorry about your arm, Klaus.”

Klaus freezes, blinking in surprise, then grins even broader. “Good to have you back, little bro.”

“I’m not a child!” Five yells, but Klaus just waves his  _ Goodbye _ hand as he disappears out the door.

“Five?” Vanya says, poking her head out of her room. She looks bleary and still half-asleep, with her rumpled pajama set and tangled bedhead. Five smiles at the sight.

“Hey,” he says. “Sorry. Did I wake you up?”

She shrugs. “Just a little. Where’s Klaus?”

“He just left.”

Vanya nods, not looking overly surprised. “How’s his arm?”

“He’ll live.”

She smiles softly. “Good.”

There’s a lull in the conversation then as Five tries to think of how to begin. Vanya settles in on the couch, just looking at him, her expression unreadable. 

She’s the first one to speak. “You came back,” she says suddenly, almost making Five jump. Her eyes sparkle with disbelief, as if she’s seeing him for the first time.

“I did,” he whispers. “I… I didn’t mean to leave, Van. I’m so sorry.” 

He knows how much he’d hurt her by disappearing. He knows that Vanya’s life changed that day. She’d told him how she’d held out hope for so long, so much longer than the rest of his family, turning on lights and making sandwiches for him. She’d told him that when he left, she’d lost her best friend, the only person that truly felt like family to her. That was his role in the apocalypse.

Vanya scoots over on the couch so she’s closer to him, their knees almost touching. She reaches out, taking his hand in her own. Touch still feels so foreign, but this is  _ Vanya, _ and he clings to her. She needs it just as much he does.

“I’m just glad you’re back.”

“Vanya,” he says, “I wanted to speak with you.”

She looks a little surprised at that, but nods. “What about?”

“You.”

Now Vanya really looks stunned. How ignored and neglected must she have been to be so surprised that her own brother would be interested in her as a person? He hates his father. He hates what’s been done to Vanya. 

“What… what do you want to know?” she asks hesitantly. He wonders briefly if she thinks he’s about to start grilling her about the book. 

He smiles gently. “I just want to talk to you, Van. This isn’t some sort of interrogation.”

“Oh. Okay. Alright. Let me just…” She gestures to her rumpled pajamas and bedhead. “Brush my teeth and stuff. There’s coffee in the kitchen, and, um, toast? Or well, bread, I guess. And peanut butter. Just, help yourself to whatever, okay? I’ll be back in a minute.”

He nods, jumping into the kitchen and putting on a pot of coffee. Vanya appears in the doorway just as it’s finished up.

“Want some?” Five asks, pouring himself a cup.

“Yes, please.” Five wrinkles his nose as Vanya pours half-and-half into her mug first, lightening the coffee. “Don’t look at me like that,” she says, laughter in her voice. “Not everyone has your weird-ass taste buds.”

They settle back in, Vanya on the couch, Five perched in the armchair, sipping their coffee in silence for a few minutes. 

“When I jumped into the future,” Five starts, “do you know what I saw? Nothing. Absolutely nothing.”

He has to tell her about the apocalypse. He needs to show her that he trusts her enough to tell her, at least that the apocalypse happens. (He won’t tell her the cause.)

“As far as I could tell,” he continues, “I was the last person left alive.”

“Oh, God.” Vanya reaches out, squeezing his hand. “Five, I’m so sorry.”

He smiles at her gently. “I knew I could get back though. I knew I could get home, it just took me a while to find the right equation.”

“You should… That must have been… Did you tell the others?”

He shakes his head. “No. I’ve decided that you’re the only one I can trust.”

“Why me?”

“Because you’ll listen. You’re important to me, Vanya, and I… I missed you. I want to take this opportunity to reconnect, and that means being open with you.”

“Five…”

“I love our siblings, Vanya, but they can be overwhelming on the best of days.”

“But not me. Because I’m—”

“You’re my  _ sister. _ And growing up, you were my best friend. You and Ben.” He coughs slightly. He’s had years to mourn, even longer than the rest of his siblings, and it still hurts every time he thinks about Ben. “Was it… was it bad?”

Vanya nods slightly, squeezing his hand tighter. 

“I’m sorry I wasn’t there.”

“It’s not your fault,” she says. “But I… I never felt more useless. And after that… with both you and Ben gone, everything just sort of fell apart. I didn’t really ever feel like a part of the family before, but without Ben, no one really did. ”

“I’m sorry.”

“Stop apologizing,” she says, smiling slightly. “You… you tried to come back, right?”

“Of course I did. I did everything I could to get back to me family.”

“And you made it.”

He chuckles halfheartedly. “Yeah, I made it. Only took forty-five years.”

“But you made it.”

“You know, the only thing that got me through of that, was the idea that one day I get to see you all again.”

“I left sandwiches out,” she whispers. “I turned the light on. I missed you so much, Five. I…”

“Thank you, Vanya. That means a lot to me. I… I know things have been tough for you. I know our family is so, so fucked up, but just know that I’m here for you, and I’m going to do everything I can to make it up to you.”

“You don’t have to do anything, Five. You’re my brother, and the only person who made me feel like I was important. I love you. You don’t have to apologize or, or try and make things right. I’m just so glad you’re back.”

“I read your book, in the apocalypse. I read it multiple times. And I need you to know that you are so wrong. You are not ordinary, Vanya. You’re so important to me, and you’re smart and kind and the greatest violinist in the world.”

“Five…” She’s smiling, but looks embarrassed. When’s the last time someone complimented her?

“And you always put up with me, and you were one of the very few people I could tolerate in that house growing up—and that is a feat in and of itself.”

She laughs, quiet but genuine and Five smiles. He’s smiled more times in the past twenty-four hours than he has in thirty-four years.

“They were insufferable,” she says.

“They really were. Do you remember when—”

A sudden knock on the door cuts them off.

“Are you expecting someone?” Five asks, frowning.

“No… Oh!” She stands suddenly and hurries over to the door. “Yes. I’m so sorry, Five. I have a lesson today. I completely forgot.”

“It’s okay,” he mumbles, watching Vanya open the door. It’s absolutely  _ terrible _ timing.

“Hi!” It’s a tall guy, dark hair, incredibly average looking. “I’m Leonard?” He shifts awkwardly, and Five relaxes. It’s just some normal guy, here to learn violin from the greatest musician in the city. Five wonders briefly if Vanya’s a good teacher. She must be, considering just how talented she is. 

“I’m—I’m Vanya. Vanya Hargreeves?” Oh, so they’re both awkward and shy. Five smirks. 

“I’m guessing I look different than your usual students,” Leonard says.

“Um, yeah, just about twenty years or so different,” Vanya chuckles slightly.

“Well, the ad didn’t say anything about age limits.”

“No, no, of course not. It’s just, most of my students are kids. Easier to learn music when you’re young, you know. Like a second language.”

“ _ Ich verstehe! _ ” Five rolls his eyes. The embarrassment radiating off of the both of them is palpable. He watches Vanya frown in confusion. “It’s German,” Leonard explains. “For  _ I understand. _ I took three years of it in high school and that’s all I can remember.”

Vanya just nods, looking like she doesn’t know what to do with that. Who would? “Well, it’s right over here, if you wanna… Oh!” She turns to see Five still sitting there and remembers that he’s still there. 

“Hello,” Leonard says politely. “Is this another one of your students, Miss Vanya?”

“Oh, no. I’m so sorry,” Vanya says. “I… I forgot you were coming. This is my brother.”

“And this is my cue to head out,” says Five, standing up and tugging on his blazer. “I’ll see you tonight, Vanya?”

“Tonight?”

He nods. “Dinner. At the house. All of us. 7:00, alright?”

“Alright.” She looks hesitant, but nods anyway. “Bye, Five. Stay safe, okay?”

“Don’t worry about me, Vanya.” 

He slips out the door, flinching at the awful sound of a screeching, discordant note, followed by a chuckle and a “sorry” from Leonard.

 

He’s got a few hours to kill before he has to face his entire family at dinner. It’s time to start his search for Harold Jenkins.

He makes his way to the library, and something in his chest shutters slightly at the sight of it still standing, tall and strong. It’s… bizarre, to say the least, setting foot inside of his apocalypse home when it’s still bustling and full of life. Part of it feels almost like an invasion.

With the building still actually standing, it takes him a little while to get used to navigating it. He finds the computers eventually.

If his siblings think he’s actually thirteen, then they should see him try and use the computer—then they’d definitely believe he’s an old man. The Commission used typewriters and the briefcases, and that was about all the technology Five had encountered since 2002. 

He’s not sure if it’s his inability to use modern technology or if Harold Jenkins just doesn’t have a very large internet presence, but either way he finds next to nothing. And it makes him want to put his fist through the goddamn screen and burn the whole place to the ground. He doesn’t do that though because he’s not quite that far gone.

The only thing he manages to find after hours of digging is some local news article from 2001, when a Harold Jenkins was arrested for murder. Five feels like it’s safe to assume that a twelve-year-old murderer would be the same person to manipulate Vanya into causing the apocalypse. But because even though Harold’s a convicted criminal, he was also a minor at the time, and there was a limited amount of personal information released about him. No residence—just that it was in the city—no family, no pictures other than an incredibly grainy, black and white mugshot that barely even looks like a person. 

The internet is a fucking goddamn dead end. Five wants to scream. He’ll do it later.

He’s wasted almost a whole day on this and it turned out to be a dead end. And now he has to go to this fucking ridiculous family dinner. Why on earth had he suggested the damn thing? Oh yeah, because he got Klaus shot, and realized that maybe his other siblings deserved at least some vague answers.

The world must really be out to get him.

 

* * *

 

“Look, Five!” Klaus beams and waves his hands wildly at the rest of their siblings. They’re gathered in the living room, looking confused and uncomfortable, like they’d all rather be anywhere else. “The gang’s all here!”

Five stares at him, unimpressed. “Wow. You did a simple task. Congratulations.” 

“What’s all this about?” Diego asks, folding his arms over his chest.

Klaus gesticulates in Five’s direction. “Our darling baby brother requested we all dine together! He’s going to tell us all about the crazy people who are trying to kill him!”

“Wait, what?” Allison whirls on him.

“Someone’s trying to kill Five?” Diego demands. He turns to Klaus of all people, demanding to know the full story, as if Five isn’t right there and much more knowledgeable on the topic.

Five scowls at both of them, Klaus for announcing it like that, Diego for treating him like a child. 

“I’m fine,” Five grits out. “I can handle myself.”

“He really can,” Klaus says. “You should have seen the little psycho last night. He saved both me and Vanya.”

“Wait, wait, wait.” Diego waves his hands in the air cutting him off. “What the hell happened?”

“Well—”

Five cuts him off. “There were a few people who weren’t happy that I came back to change things. I took care of them. They shouldn’t bother any of you again.”

“Five—” Vanya starts, just to be swiftly talked over by Allison.

“How do you know? What if they come looking for you again?”

“Well, that particular group can’t do much of anything anymore,” Five snorts.

“You killed them?” Luther demands, taking a step towards Five, looking appalled. 

“Sure. They were going to kill me. And Klaus and Vanya could have been caught in the crossfire. I wasn’t going to let that happen.”

“And you’re sure no one else is going to attack us?” Diego asks, still looking a bit skeptical about the whole thing.

“Positive.” He’s not letting the Commission anywhere near them. They’ll have to go over Five’s dead body.

“Look,” Klaus interjects, raising his hands placatingly and having the decency to look a bit sheepish for having started the whole outburst, “Five here wanted to have family dinner, so let’s get to it. Welcome home, Five!”

“Welcome home, Five,” the others echo, sounding much less enthusiastic.

“Welcome home,” Vanya says as the others head towards the dining room to eat the meal Grace lovingly prepared for them.

 

The rest of dinner goes about as well as can be expected in the Hargreeves household: Luther and Diego fight, literally within the first ten minutes, and Diego eventually storms off to help Mom with the dishes. Klaus is his usual self, which never helps Luther’s mood, and Allison ends up spending most of her energy playing some form of mediator, although she still tends to side with Luther. Vanya is quiet, just like she’s always been, and no one really speaks to her except for Mom and Allison a couple times. The very few times she opens her mouth, she's talked right over. 

Five is feeling overwhelmed before dinner even begins. It’s been a long day, and he doesn’t really feel all that much closer to stopping the apocalypse. Vanya’s day job really cut into his plans.

He’d wanted nothing more than to reconnect with his family for the past forty-five years, but he didn’t realize how difficult it would be. He’s happy, so unbelievably happy, to see them alive again and he’s going to do everything in his power to keep them that way, but there are things they don’t understand, that they can’t understand. They can’t understand that he’s not actually thirteen. They can’t understand how long he fought to get back. They can’t wrap their heads around the future that could still be waiting for them—they can’t understand that there was nothing left. 

They can’t understand living alone for thirty-four years. It does stuff to you, messes with your head. 

They can’t understand why he’s changed, and they probably never will.

“Why on earth did I think this was a good idea?”

He doesn't even mean to say it out loud, but it causes his siblings to finally fall silent, turning to look at him. Diego and Luther still look angry, Allison is frustrated, and Klaus, who had been enjoying the drama, suddenly looks a bit guilty. Vanya’s sad, resigned expression hasn’t really changed all night.

Diego breaks the short, awkward silence with a sharp, bitter laugh. “Yeah, I don’t know why either, man. Did you think the family would just magically start to get along just because you came back, seventeen years late, I might add?”

“No,” Five snaps. “I know better than that.”

“Oh, really?”

“ _ Yes, _ really. I’m not an idiot and I’m not a child. I know this family is a damn mess, I just hoped maybe you’d all want to take this chance to try and maybe, just  _ maybe _ fix some things?”

He refuses to look at Vanya as he says that. He doesn’t just need to fix Vanya, he needs to fix their whole broken relationship. Five can’t be the only one holding her together. The whole family has to pitch in, or the apocalypse will happen.

They’re going to ruin every single thing he’s worked forty-five years to prevent, just because they’re stubborn, selfish, emotionally-stunted  _ assholes. _

“So are you just going to give up on us after one bad dinner that none of us even wanted?” Diego hisses.

“ _ No. _ ” What is he insinuating? That Five would abandon his family? He hadn’t meant to the first time, but they wouldn’t know that. 

“Then what did you think was going to happen, Five?” 

“Hey, hey, hey.” Klaus waves his hands through the air. “Let’s all calm down.”

“Yes,” Allison agrees hastily. “We’re trying, Five. We’re still a family, but it’s…”

“A bit fucked up,” Klaus says.

“I was going to say  _ difficult, _ ” Allison corrects. “But yeah, that too.”

“Well, that’s great and all,” Five snaps, standing up from the table, “but I don’t have time for your childish bickering. I have some things to do. Let’s try this again in a week or so, sound good? Great. Now if you’ll excuse me—”

He stalks away from the dining room, planning to go get some stuff from his room and head out.

“Hey, Five.” He turns to see Vanya catch his sleeve to get his attention. He stops, waiting to hear what she has to say. He hadn’t even realized she’d followed him. “I, uh…” She shifts somewhat nervously and bites down on her lower lip. Five tilts his head, gesturing for her to go on. “There’s a little coffee shop not far from my apartment. How about breakfast tomorrow? 9:00? It would be, uh, a lot quieter than this disaster.”

“That sounds great, Vanya. I’ll see you there.” She smiles, looking relieved and pleased. Five returns the expression.

“Goodnight, Five,” she says softly. “I’m glad to have you back.”

“Glad to be back,” he mumbles, even quieter than her. “Have a good night, Vanya.”

 

Now, he has important business to attend to. It’s been far too long since he’s seen Dolores.

 

* * *

 

Leonard Peabody walks towards Vanya Hargreeves’ apartment. He actually feels kind of nervous; it’s silly, he shouldn’t be anything other than ecstatic—this is his chance, the opportunity of a  _ lifetime. _ Finally, he has the chance to get back at the Umbrella Academy for everything they’ve done to him. Vanya Hargreeves—the perfect weapon. According to their father’s journal, she could destroy her family without even breaking a sweat, and then she would thank him for saving her. Two outcasts, told they were ordinary when in reality they were so much more. It’s perfect, a match made in heaven. 

This is truly a momentous occasion. One for the history books.

He slides up to the door, straightening his jacket and raising his hand to knock on the door when he hears voices coming from the inside. He pauses at that, leaning closer to listen. 

_ “You know, the only thing that got me through of that, was the idea that one day I get to see you all again.” _ The voice is male, but it sounds young. Perhaps another one of Vanya’s violin students? But that doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, given the topic of conversation.

_ “I left sandwiches out.”  _ This one is a woman’s voice, most likely Vanya Hargreeves, seeing as this is her apartment. She sounds so sad. That’s pretty much what Leonard expects from the seventh Hargreeves child, though. _ “I turned the light on. I missed you so much, Five. I…” _

Five. Like Number Five? The Boy? The one who disappeared seventeen years ago?

Harold had thought Five was so cool when he was younger—he had some ridiculously cool powers, and the cool, cocky superhero attitude that Harold had envied.

Of course, that had been back before the illusion shattered, and Harold realized the truth about the Hargreeves family.

_ “Thank you, Vanya. That means a lot to me. I… I know things have been tough for you. I know our family is so, so fucked up, but just know that I’m here for you, and I’m going to do everything I can to make it up to you.” _

_ “You don’t have to do anything, Five. You’re my brother, and the only person who made me feel like I was important. I love you. You don’t have to apologize or, or try and make things right. I’m just so glad you’re back.” _

Oh no. Vanya seems to feel pretty connected to Number Five, even after all these years. That won’t do for Leonard’s plans at all.

_ “...I need you to know that you are so wrong. You are not ordinary, Vanya. You’re so important to me, and you’re smart and kind and the greatest violinist in the world.” _

_ “Five…”  _

_ “And you always put up with me, and you were one of the very few people I could tolerate in that house growing up—and that is a feat in and of itself.” _

Soft, quiet laughter. It might be Vanya. 

This is terrible.

This could ruin everything. He needs Vanya alone, he needs to be the only one who knows how special she is. 

He has to remove Number Five from the picture.

But maybe… maybe this is a chance to get some more personal revenge as well. Kill two birds with one stone. 

He’ll have to make a few changes to the plan, but… This could be good. He could work with this.

With a sharp nod to himself, he lifts his hand and knocks on the door, setting the beginnings of his plan into motion.

 

* * *

 

Five gets to the coffee shop Vanya told him about two hours early, staggering in practically the moment it opens its doors. It had been a long night, facing off against Hazel and Cha-Cha, but he feels better with Dolores once again tucked firmly underneath his arm. They settle into a booth, Dolores sitting at his side, near the wall so he can protect her. He’s still feeling a little on-edge after the department store shoot-out.

There’s no way that the black coffee he orders will calm his nerves, but he absolutely does not care.

“Just a little while longer,” Five says to Dolores, “and you’ll get to see Vanya again. Now, she’s not quite the same, and she won’t remember you, but I think you’ll get along anyway. I’m excited to introduce you to her. Just try to understand, our Vanya knew about her powers, and she wasn’t having all of her emotions sucked out by those horrible pills. I’m working on that, but I can’t just spring all of this on her, you know? I have to be careful. And I still have to find this Harold Jenkins person. I should warn Vanya about him, just to be safe. She’ll believe me, right? Yeah, I think she will too. That’s probably a better bet than me trying to use those computers in the library. You should have seen me, Dolores.” He chuckles lightly and sips his coffee. It’s half-decent, maybe good enough for him to get another cup or two.

He has plenty of time to kill before Vanya gets there so he grabs a stack of napkins and starts scribbling away. He needs to make sure he gets this thing with Vanya right, and that means calculating the probability of the best time to tell her about her powers. He dives headfirst into the math, zoning out on pretty much everything else, with the exception of gulping down sips of his coffee every few minutes. 

Five gets lost in his own head, no longer aware of much else other than Dolores by his side and the numbers in his head.

He’s not aware of the man that has walked into the shop until the guy’s standing right beside his table, looking right down at Five. Five looks up, tightening his grip on the pen in case he needs to get creative with it.

“Hey,” the man slides into the booth across from them and Five instantly stiffens, readying himself for a fight. It takes him a moment to recognize the guy—Leonard, Vanya’s newest student, the super awkward guy who seemed to be really interested in learning from Vanya. “You’re Vanya’s brother, right? We met yesterday. Briefly. I’m Leonard? Leonard Peabody?”

Five stares at him, wanting nothing more than to insult and threaten the guy until he goes away, but he physically bites his tongue to stop himself from launching into his default aggression. This is Vanya’s student, who seems to like her and see her as the talented person she is, and he doesn’t want to mess that up for her. Besides, he needs Vanya to trust him in all of this, and he can’t exactly go around scarring her students if he wants her to actually listen to him and not think he’s lost all his marbles. 

“Yeah, I remember you.” Five goes for nonchalant, but the hurt expression on Leonard’s face makes him think it was more cold and dismissive. Oh well.

“Oh. Well, your sister’s a great teacher.”

“I’m glad.”

“And she’s super talented.”

“I’m aware.”

At this point, Leonard looks a little trapped in the awkward, stifled conversation he’s created, and he shifts nervously, searching for something else to say.

“Hey,” he says, glancing at Five’s mug. “Can I get you a refill? They do ‘em for free here unless you order something weirdly fancy.”

“Sure,” Five says, shoving the mug in his direction across the table. “Coffee. Black.”

Leonard makes an odd face at the order, but nods anyway, getting up and heading to the counter. Five stares at the table, searching for the strength to  _ not _ kill this man. 

He’s Vanya’s student. He’s Vanya’s student. He’s Vanya’s student.

“So,” Leonard says when he returns, both mugs of coffee in his hands. He passes one over to Five and sits back down. Five really wishes he would leave. “You must know Vanya pretty well.”

“Well, she’s my sister.”

“I was an only child, myself,” Leonard says. “Wouldn’t know what that’s like.”

Five takes a long drink of his coffee. It burns his tongue, but he pushes through it. Let the caffeine give him the patience he so desperately needs.

“It’s great,” Five says, his voice flat and emotionless. Maybe the guy will catch the hint and scram. Or maybe he’ll just get scared off. Five tends to be really good at that last one.

“Yeah? I bet. It must have been great, growing up with an older sister like Vanya. She seems really cool.”

Five sucks down more of his coffee. 

“I’ve been out of town for a little while. We’re reconnecting.” He’s really beginning to grow irritated and tired of this conversation. The only thing worse than making small talk with Vanya’s student is him trying to dig into Five’s personal life. If he doesn’t stop prying, things just might get violent. Five takes a long sip of his coffee. “Look, Peabody—”

That’s right when the world tilts dangerously, leaving Five to somewhat desperately cling to consciousness until it manages to right itself again.

Leonard is staring at him, not concerned, but more… calculating, and almost anticipatory. It makes Five’s blood run cold.

He blinks rapidly, trying to clear his head. The drowsiness wanes, but doesn’t disappear completely. He can feel it trying to rise back up again.

“Are you alright, Five?”

He feels dizzy. His eyelids feel like they’re trying to hold up cement. The world spins and tunnels around him.

“Wha—”

“Oh dear,” Leonard says, his voice far too loud. “Let’s get you out of here.”

Five wants to say no, he wants to shake his head and scream his lungs out and throw a fit and jump far, far away from this man—but his body won’t cooperate.

_ Drugs, _ he realizes suddenly. He’s been drugged. Leonard Peabody drugged him. 

How?  _ Why? _

Leonard has his hands on Five, pulling him out of the booth and holding him up with an arm around his shoulders. Five finds himself with no choice but to stagger against him, pulled along by Leonard’s insistent walk. 

“Poor thing,” Leonard says. “Let’s get you home, yeah? Your poor mother has been so worried.” He’s laying the lies on thick, even to Five’s cotton-filled ears, but he’s distantly aware of the barista’s sympathetic look and well-wishing.

Leonard planned this out somehow. Five wants to throw up.

“Let go of me.” He tries to yell and scream and let them know that he’s not with this man, but his voice is so soft that even Leonard barely hears him.

They’re at the door, they’re leaving the shop.

“Dolores,” Five mumbles weakly. She’s still at the booth. Panic rises with the bile in his throat.

Leonard walks him to a car, opening the a door to the backseat and practically tossing Five in like a ragdoll. 

“Sorry, Number Five,” Leonard says, all the fake crooning gone from his voice. “But I’ve got big plans. It’s nothing personal. Well, actually it sort of is.” 

He leans over Five, securing him inside the car.

“I’ll kill you,” Five slurs out. “...swear I’m gonna kill you. Stay ‘way from Vanya.”

Leonard shushes him gently. “Just go ahead and sleep, Number Five. We can talk about Vanya later. Promise.”

He doesn’t want to. He has to fight this. He… he has to jump. He has to get out of here. His body isn’t responding, not even enough to glare up at his kidnapper, much less make his escape. 

Leonard Peabody’s shark grin is the last thing Five sees before the world fades away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> at least he finally found Harold Jenkins?
> 
> if anyone wants to chat with me on tumblr (@ ema--vee) i think i'm going to actually start using it again/occasionally posting writing updates and stuff (and i'm always happy to chat/yell about tua!)


	10. accelerando

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “What do you want, Vanya?” Diego asks. He’s standing in the corner, fiddling with one of his knives and refusing to actually look at her. “Need some material for you next book?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> pls excuse the excessive use of italics

Five wakes up somewhere cold and foreign. The world blurs in and out of focus and he tries desperately to hold onto consciousness, but he slips away again, the sight of a figure sitting in a chair across from him fading out of view.

 

The next time he stirs, the person is still there. They’re humming now, some simple and repetitive melody that Five recognizes but can’t put his finger on in such an addled state. It brings up faint memories of Vanya’s early days on the violin, something classical for beginners.

Five tries to open his mouth, tries to demand to know where the hell he is, but his body isn’t listening to him. He can’t even hold his eyes open anymore.

“Take your time, Number Five. I’ve got nowhere to be.”

 

Third time’s the charm—Five blinks rapidly and groans with the effort it takes just to raise his head. His whole body is stiff and sore and completely and utterly fatigued.

He tries to move, but finds he can’t. Ignoring the wave of dizziness and nausea that accompany the action, he looks down to see his wrists secured tightly to the arms of the chair he’s in. His legs are bound similarly, making it impossible for him to do any more than buck slightly in his seat. The restraints dig painfully into his wrists and ankles the more he tugs on them, but that doesn’t stop him.

Being restrained like this is a distant but familiar feeling, one from his childhood. Back before he’d run, his dad had wanted him to learn to jump out of different restraints. He’d never really gotten the hang of it back then, and he hasn’t exactly tried since. He’s always hated it though; it makes him feel truly helpless, and there’s precious little that Five hates more than not being in control.

“Finally awake?”

His head shoots up to look at the speaker and all the memories come flooding back—the coffeeshop, Vanya’s student, the painful conversation, _Dolores._

He glares at his kidnapper, who’s still seated across from him, legs crossed and looking the picture of casual.

“Now, your father’s notes were certainly helpful for properly restraining you—you are a tricky little bastard—but still, you have to be impressed with how I put this all together. I mean, in just a few short hours, I figured out to knock you out, neutralize your powers, and managed to track you down and get you here. Your father was so convinced that I was nothing, that I was _ordinary,_ but he was too close-minded to see me for what I really am.”

“A jealous, pathetic bastard?” Five spits.

His head snaps to the side, pain exploding across his cheek as Jenkins whips the journal across his face with a loud crack.

“A _genius_ and an innovator. I deserved to be a part of the Academy! I would have been great! I _will_ _be_ great, with Vanya by my side.”

“It’s you, isn’t it?” Five growls. “You’re Harold Jenkins.”

Peabody’s— _Jenkins’s_ —eyes go wide in surprise. “Very good, Number Five. I guess the tabloids were right; you are the smart one. How do you know me?”

Five glares at him. “Stay away from Vanya, Jenkins. I’m warning you.”

Jenkins laughs. “Let me guess, you’re going to get out of here and then you’re going to kill me, am I right?”

Five grins wickedly. “You have no idea who you’re dealing with.”

“Oh, but I do,” Jenkins says. He leans over to a table beside them and grabs a familiar red book, the very one that Five has been searching for since his return, the book that caused the apocalypse. He waves it around for Five to see.  “See, your wonderful father took detailed notes on all his children, including you and ordinary little Number Seven.”

“Stop it. Vanya’s not ordinary.”

“Oh, I know she’s not. Wait, do you _know_? You do! You know about Vanya. I bet you even helped hide it from her, couldn’t stand anyone else being that powerful, always had to be the best, even if it hurt your siblings.”

“ _No._ I would never do that to Vanya. She’s not ordinary because she’s _never_ been ordinary. She’s a brilliant person and a wonderful sister and you need to stay away from her before I break every bone in your body.”

“But you do know. About Vanya. About her powers.”

“You have no idea what you’re dealing with, Jenkins. You can’t control Vanya.”

“That’s the thing,” he says, grinning and leaning towards Five. “I don’t need to. I’m only reminding Vanya about the truth. She’s going to seek revenge of her own volition. All I’m doing is nudging her in the right direction.”

“Then why am I here?” Five asks, tugging again on the restraints. He feels so weak. “If these are all Vanya’s own thoughts, then why kidnap me? It shouldn’t be necessary.”

“Because for some reason,” Jenkins says, tapping against the journal angrily, “Vanya seems to think you’re different. She thinks you care about her. Of course, now I know that you only care because you know she’s powerful, but Vanya doesn’t even know about her powers yet, so I have to play it safe and remove you from the picture anyway.”

“I _do not_ only care about her for her powers,” Five hisses, allowing so much danger to slip into his voice that Jenkins actually backs away slightly. “You have no idea about anything. You don’t even know Vanya. She’s smart and kind and talented and patient and you are not worth the dirt under her feet. You are _nothing,_ Jenkins.”

This time he sees the hit coming, the fist barreling into his chin. Five’s head snaps and the world spins dangerously around him. Jenkins doesn’t stop there. Next thing Five knows, one of Jenkins’s heavy work boots is slamming into his ribs, knocking the chair backwards. Five’s head collides with the floor and his vision goes dark for a moment. He returns to his senses with his head spinning and a stabbing pain in his side.

Jenkins leans over him, grabbing the chair and hauling him back upright. “You think you’re so tough, so _powerful,_ but you’re not. Do you want to know what your dear old pops wrote about you, after you left? _No great loss._ You were _no great loss,_ Number Five. Both of us, we meant nothing to Reginald Hargreeves, but the difference between us is that I don’t have to rely on any powers to do something powerful. You are nothing without your magical abilities, helpless, just like you are right now. And I did that. I managed to defeat you in less than twenty-four hours, and it wasn’t even hard. Face it, I outsmarted you. I outmaneuvered you. The great Number Five. I am more powerful than you.”

“I am going to get out of here,” Five warns. “I’m going to get out of here and I am going to kill you. Slowly.”

“In that case…” Jenkins stands up, turning back to his side table. Five can’t see what’s on it, and although he’s not particularly interested in finding out, he refuses to be scared of this imbecile. There is nothing that his slimy, weak coward can throw at him that can be any worse than the horrors Five’s faced in his long life. “I suppose I’ll just have to make the most of our time together.”

 

* * *

 

Vanya waits at the coffeeshop for forty-five minutes before giving up on Five. He’d actually seemed happy to see her upon his return, but at the same time, he seemed to have a lot going on. She shouldn’t be surprised that breakfast with her has taken a backseat. The Five she remembers from her childhood always made an effort to find time for her unlike the rest of her family, but maybe this time it’s finally too much. Vanya can’t help him. She’s ordinary, and Five knows it, even if he never really says it outright or to her face. She should be impressed that it took a whole two days before her presence slipped his mind.

It stings. It really does. She’s used to being forgotten or ignored by the rest of the family, but never Five. Not even when he was busy. Whatever he has going on, it’s no place for ordinary Vanya, and Five’s finally realized that. It was really only a matter of time.

 _Unless,_ something inside of her, desperate to not feel so rejected by the one brother she thought she could always rely on, _something happened to him. There were people after him. He could be in danger. He could be_ hurt.

Her stomach clenches painfully and she shoots out of her seat. She needs to go to the Academy, now. She needs to see if he’s okay.

She’s so distracted that she quite literally bumps into someone on her way out the door.

“Sorry,” she mumbles, head down.

They chuckle. “It’s all good. Hey, Vanya.”

She looks up at her name, recognizing now that the person she ran over is her student from yesterday. “Oh. Hi, Leonard. I’m sorry. I wasn’t… I was stuck in my head.”

“Hey, hey, Vanya it’s okay. No big deal.”

“Sorry.”

“You already said that. You don’t have to keep apologizing for something that was at least 70% my fault, Vanya. You don’t have to apologize for taking up space.”

Vanya stops. She’s never heard that before. “Oh.”

“Hey, you want to grab some coffee?” he asks, gesturing towards the cafe. “I was just on my way in.”

“Oh, no, I really have to go. I’m sorry. I mean, I’m not sorry. I mean—”

He raises his hands. “It’s fine. Dinner then, maybe? Unless, oh that’s too forward. Now _I’m_ sorry. Forget I asked. I just think you’re a cool person and I would love to get to know you better, but obviously that’s ridiculous because—”

“No, no, no,” she cuts him off, hopefully shutting this down before he gets the impression that she doesn’t want to spend time with him. She does, really. He’s nice and smart and seems to genuinely be interested in her, which is incredible. “I would love to get dinner, but I’ve got some stuff going on right now that I really should deal with. I’m sorry.”

“Hey, don’t be sorry. I’ll take a rain check? It’s not like I’m not going anywhere.” That makes something warm blossom in her chest, something she’s never felt before. “You have my number, yeah? Give me a call if you want. If not, I’ll see you next week so you can listen to me butcher _Frere Jacques_ some more.”

“Yeah…”

Leonard smiles at her one last time before disappearing inside of the coffeeshop. He wants to spend time with her, and even if she doesn’t go to this dinner, he’s not going to cancel his lessons. She doesn’t have to compromise her own interests for him. She’s never had that before.

Too bad the timing is so, so bad. There’s a massive pit in her stomach that’s growing every moment that she doesn’t know where Five is.

She has to talk to her family. She can only hope one of them knows where Five is.

 

Somehow, miraculously, all her other siblings are at the Academy when she arrives, although she does have to enlist Allison’s help in getting them to come out and talk to her. Klaus, unfortunately, is only wearing a towel. Vanya really should have specified that although this is urgent, it isn’t quite so urgent that her brother couldn’t make himself decent first.

“What do you want, Vanya?” Diego asks. He’s standing in the corner, fiddling with one of his knives and refusing to actually look at her. “Need some material for you next book?”

“Lay off, Diego,” Allison snaps. “She wouldn’t come here if it wasn’t important.” And that’s true. She has no real place here. She’s only here for Five.

“Five is missing,” Vanya says outright.

“Okay, so?” Diego says. “He made it pretty clear that he’s a big boy who doesn’t want anything to do with us.”

“No, it’s not that,” Vanya insists. “He was supposed to meet me for coffee this morning and he didn’t show.”

“That is troubling,” Klaus murmurs. “Little dude seems to really like his coffee.”

“Nah, it doesn’t mean anything,” Diego says. “Look, I know you guys were close as kids, but it’s been long time. He’s moved on, Vanya. To bigger and better things than this shitshow of a family.”

“He wouldn’t do that,” Vanya says again. “He wouldn’t stand me up. He—”

“Why not? Because he sometimes paid attention to you when we were kids? Grow up, Vanya. Five came back and he wants nothing to do with us. _Any_ of us. You’re not special.”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa.” Klaus holds up his hands in a time-out. “Vanya might be onto something. There were those people after him, and they seemed pretty dangerous.”

“Thank you,” Vanya breathes.

“You said he took them all out though,” Luther says.

Klaus shrugs. “There could be more.”

“But if he didn’t have any trouble with the first ones, then why would he have any trouble now?” Allison asks, frowning.

Klaus snaps his fingers. “He was tired. I caught him coming in yesterday morning and I don’t think he'd slept at all. He’s been running on coffee since he first got back, and he’s bound to crash at some point. If he got caught off guard…”

“He could be in danger,” Allison finishes, equal parts realization and fear dawning on her face.

“We need to find him,” Diego says, suddenly on board. Even Luther nods in agreement.

Vanya relaxes, just slightly, some of the angry, terrified tension draining out of her with her siblings’ support. “Okay. Okay, so where do we start? How do we find him?”

“Wait, you’re not getting involved, Vanya,” Allison says. “It’s too dangerous.”

“What? He’s my brother too. I want to help find him.”

“You almost died last time, sis,” Klaus says, having the decency to look a tad apologetic.

“So did you,” Vanya protests.

He reaches out, patting her arm awkwardly. “I’m used to it.”

“They’re right,” Diego says. “You’re not a part of this life, Vanya.”

“But—”

“You would just slow us down,” Luther adds, his voice confident and unwavering, always acting as if everything that comes out of his mouth is absolute. “And that wouldn’t help Five at all.”

Allison nods. “Five wouldn’t want you getting too close to all this.”

It’s supposed to make her feel better, Vanya knows. It’s supposed to placate her into sitting out, but instead it just makes her angry. She’s a part of this family too, even if everyone in this room would rather pretend she wasn’t. Five is her best friend, and she’s the one who realized he was missing. She deserves to be a part of this. She can’t get left out of this too. She _can’t._

But there’s no arguing with them like this. Her siblings are so rarely anything resembling a united front. Apparently, the only thing they can ever manage to agree on is that Vanya is useless.

She feels so useless and angry and stressed and devastated and worried—everything is raging inside of her, fighting to be her primary emotion and she can’t handle it. It’s too much.

“Fine,” Vanya says. She’d wanted to snap, wanted to show them that she was angry. Instead it comes out resigned, the way they expect her to be. All of her siblings nod, looking glad to have broken her down.

She would ask them to keep her informed, but she knows they’d just forget as soon as she’s out of sight. Vanya turns to leave, and none of them say a word to her. They’re just silent, waiting for her to leave so they can start strategizing once she’s out of earshot. She’s not even allowed to hear the elusive inner workings of the great Umbrella Academy.

Vanya stands out front, on the sidewalk. It’s raining, but she doesn’t even want to stay inside that place any longer to wait for a cab.

She’s never felt so incredibly useless and it has her desperate for… _something._ She doesn’t even know what.

She needs a distraction. She needs to talk to someone about anything, anything other than the Umbrella Academy and her siblings and how horrible she’s feeling right now. She needs someone to listen to her, someone to actually hear her and try and understand, for once in her life.

Vanya marches down the sidewalk, making a beeline for the payphone. She fishes out the phone number that she shoved in her pocket yesterday, not thinking she’d ever use it. Now she clings to it like a lifeline.

“Leonard?” she says, after he picks up on the first ring. “It’s Vanya. You know what? Dinner sounds great.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> these kids have a lot of issues

**Author's Note:**

> comments fuel my writing so stop in and talk to me!


End file.
